Podcasts about Stafford Beer

What if the problem isn't your strategy, your people, or your tools, but the lens you're looking through? In this first conversation with Andrew Stotz, quality educator Balaji Reddie explains why so many organizations chase Deming's 14 Points and prizes but miss the philosophy underneath. He also gets into what changes once you start seeing your organization as one connected system. There are a few surprises along the way, like why his employees actually celebrated the day he got rid of performance appraisals. 0:00:01.9 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today I'm here with featured guest Balaji Reddie, who is an educator and trainer in teaching of Dr. Deming and quality management generally. Now the topic for today is a deeper perspective of the teachings of Dr. Deming. Balaji, how are you?   0:00:29.6 Balaji Reddie: I am fine. It's wonderful to see you this morning. I have been looking forward to this for quite some time now.   0:00:37.0 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. In fact, we've been talking back and forth in the past and then we had a meeting recently to get going on this because you've got so much to share. And one of the things I just said is a deeper perspective on the teachings of Dr. Deming. Maybe you could just give a little background of yourself for those people that have never heard of your journey. Maybe tell us a little bit about your journey, the Deming journey, as well as what you're doing now.   0:01:02.2 Balaji Reddie: All right. So I am an electrical engineer by profession and my first job which I got was in a lamp, a bulb manufacturing company which made automotive lamps. And that's where I chose to be in the quality department because I was being shunted around in all the different departments and the owner of the company asked me, "Where would you like to be?" and I said, "Quality." I don't know, when I look back why I chose. I think it appealed to me as an engineer and also the fact that I wanted to be a manager. It combined engineering and something to do with managing people. I don't want to sound dramatic, but I don't think I chose quality, I think quality chose me. But what I did after that was conscious. I did a postgraduate diploma in quality management, the first structured course in the country, and then went on to a Master of Science in quality management here in India.   0:02:00.2 Balaji Reddie: So that's been my journey here as far as working. I worked a lot. I used to teach part-time, but I made this switch 20 years ago to be an educator primarily and decided to put all my focus into creating the next gen of managers. At the same time, during the bit of a free time that I have, I do consult, but that's not the core profession of mine. So, yes, I'm an educator and a trainer. You can say that. I teach quality management, anything to do with operations, supply chain, et cetera, but there's always been a Deming slant to it. Along with that, I've also liked to... Because I went into the works of Dr. Juran, I got a good chance to meet with him and be in touch with him. It was only the last six years of his life, but I think he had very little time to give me, but he gave me time. So I have a good perspective of both these gentlemen. And if you know quality, they're the pioneers.   0:03:01.5 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And I'm curious, when you first started out with the degrees and the, as you mentioned, getting a diploma and then a master's, was Deming front and center in there or was that a secondary thing? What was it like in the beginning?   0:03:19.6 Balaji Reddie: Oh, my entire focus was actually Deming. I needed to be qualified in that. I wanted to qualify myself in quality, that's what I meant here, because there was no... I was looking for a structured course on the subject. You had these training programs, certificate courses, but this one caught my attention when they said we have a diploma in quality. And part of the course was we had to, there was a project like a dissertation, and we had to show how we implemented this in our companies where we were working. And for those who were not working, they were provided companies where you go and actually implement these. So it was a win-win. So the company gained and you gained. That's how it was. That's what I liked about that course. Same with the masters. It was a complete two-year course. This was a year-and-a-half or three semesters. That was more elaborate, the masters. So, yeah.   0:04:18.0 Andrew Stotz: And what is the state of Deming and the teachings of Dr. Deming in India? We know that many companies in India have implemented the teachings of Deming over the years. But of course, there's a lot of people that just know nothing. I'm just curious, what is the state right now as far as the teachings of Dr. Deming?   0:04:40.3 Balaji Reddie: Oh, I'd like to... Just a slight correction there. We have the highest number of Deming Prize winners, but that does not necessarily mean that they're implementing the teachings of Dr. Deming. In fact, many of them after having got the prize... I worked in a company, we were suppliers to one of them. And when they came to do a vendor assessment to our factory, obviously there's a lot of buzz. Everyone in the company, they called me the Deming man. They used to call me that. And so when these guys came down and they were talking and when they gave their business card which had the Deming Prize logo, so they said, "Oh, we have... You know, Balaji is here and he's our Deming man." So who's he and what is this? And so they came and met me and they said that, "We got the Deming Prize." I said, "Excellent." But I said, "Just because you got the Deming Prize, I mean, have you worked on the Deming philosophy?" "Isn't this the same?" And I said, "No." And I, of course, joked with them, and they said, "So how do we learn?" And I said, "Pay me." [laughter] Anyway, yeah, then we got talking and they realized that there was such a big gap in what they were doing. For instance, when I spoke to them about performance appraisals and having quotas and things like that, they were like, "What?"   0:06:04.9 Andrew Stotz: Interesting. And when we talk about the Deming Prize, when I asked you that, we're talking about the Deming Prize which is offered by the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers through their Deming Prize Committee. This isn't something done through the Deming Institute.   0:06:12.3 Balaji Reddie: No.   0:06:19.7 Andrew Stotz: Yep. Okay. And do people study Deming there in India anymore or is it fading out or...   0:06:26.7 Balaji Reddie: Well, yeah, that's what I said, they do know. The good part is that because of the fact that the Deming Prize winners are there, at least they know about Dr. Deming. And then they're curious to know, "Oh, what did he teach?" Because again, they've been given that perspective that he taught, well, wrongly, PDCA, and he focused on the 14 points. And then when they read the 14 points and then they get... Because when you read it just without understanding, you can actually... It can put off certain people. You may get a little repulsed and say, "Oh, my God, what's he saying?" But then there are certain people who get intrigued and say, "Wait a minute. This is challenging. He's saying that we need not have quotas? Then how are you going to get work done?" And that's where the questioning begins. And there have been normally these trends where some companies where they called me over, I shall not name one of them, one of the students I was teaching in class and I was talking about the 14 points, and then she comes up to me and she says, "I've spoken about you to my father, and he's working in this company, and they're going for the Deming Prize. He wants to meet you." And then she brings him to the college the next morning and then we had a lovely discussion. And he said, "We've been discussing the 14 points." And I said, "You know what? You're putting the cart before the horse. You need to discuss profound knowledge first." So he said, "I'll put you in touch with my HR, the human resource." And then that lady got in touch with me, then we had a good chat and I explained to her and she understood very quickly. Incidentally, Andrew, that's something very amazing, when I speak about these things to the HR people, they take to it like a fish takes to water. They say, "You're right. What can we do about appraisals? Appraisals are wrong." But they also know they're shackled. They do not have the authority to break and come out of it. There have been some cases where they've been bold enough, but many of them... That's one of the things I've seen over these last 20 years that I've been teaching, that everybody principally agrees, but they also say that we're bound by it.   0:08:37.6 Andrew Stotz: That reminds me when I attended my first seminar when I was 24, and I was very intimidated by all the people in the room. I was just fresh out of university, working at Pepsi in Los Angeles. I flew into Washington, D.C., and so I sat right in the front row and I just decided I'm not gonna look at anybody behind me because they're all bigwig executives. But then when I heard Deming really show no mercy and really be tough to them, I was like, "Wow, wow, this is interesting." And he was getting to the... As a factory supervisor, which is what I was at Pepsi, I could just see he was getting to the heart of the matter. And so, yeah, a lot of things are very obvious to people in the factory, but then it's the leadership that is an issue. I'm curious when we think about... Let's imagine that someone listening to this has never heard of Dr. Deming and it's their first time, they stumbled upon this, they're hearing you speak. They're gonna ask the question, "Why does this matter? What benefit do I get from this?" How would you describe that to someone who knows nothing about Dr. Deming and his teachings?   0:09:59.3 Balaji Reddie: Oh, well, when you start getting aware of what this man had to say, let me tell you, when you start actually getting to it, you'll find that what you've been missing all this time in life. And then when you actually get to implement this, it'll be way, way better than where you are right now, sometimes totally in a very, very different direction. And you begin to realize that you had an illusion of knowledge, that you thought you were correct, and then suddenly a new perspective comes in. Just to make a point here, I don't want to be boastful about this, but I'm really proud to say this, that in all the companies that I worked, I removed performance appraisal. None of the companies I worked in had performance appraisal. And the day we removed it in one of the companies, there were actually celebrations.   [laughter]   0:10:56.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. Which for many people listening that don't know anything about the teachings of Dr. Deming may think, "That's crazy, because I thought that we run business through performance appraisals, KPIs, and the like." One of the ways I was thinking when you were just speaking was it's a little bit like Deming's... You're a fish, and Dr. Deming is a guy that's gonna come up and tell you, "Oh, by the way, you're surrounded by water." And you're like, "Wait, what do you mean? What's water?" And then all of a sudden he brings this awareness like, "What am I swimming in? I am swimming in something, and it's called water." And it's like everything that's going on, the concept of how we learn, the concept of variation, the concept of psychology, it's like all of these are foundational things that we've been swimming in, but we really haven't been paying attention to. And I think he woke me up to a lot of that. So what should we talk about today? What do you got on your mind?   0:11:55.7 Balaji Reddie: Well, I presume that the audience would be someone who's read about Deming, or if they have not read, I can go it either way.   0:12:05.9 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, I mean, I would say just let's go into what your learnings are and what you want to teach us today and share with us, and then people can follow along.   0:12:17.4 Balaji Reddie: All right. So let's begin with what he meant by Profound Knowledge, because that was something he put together only towards the end of his life. I'm reminded of a few things that led to me thinking about these things. One of the very first books that was written on him was by Mary Walton, The Deming Management Method. And with due respect, she was an excellent journalist, and so she followed him around. Everyone was intrigued to know who this man is because he had just gained popularity. If Japan Can... Why Can't We? And so she wrote this book, I think as early as '84, if I'm not mistaken. And she followed him around for almost three years before she actually published the book. So she attended four-day seminars, and she's trying to understand what this man was. So the biography bit of it was very nice. But if you go there in the preface and in one of the chapters, there's a very interesting conversation where she says, "I asked Deming that why don't you set up a body, an organization? Why are you doing this all alone?" And he didn't say a word to her, and he just mentioned to her, "I'm good." So I believe he was still looking for the answers to offer something to the world. He had it all in uncoordinated stuff here and there, but that came much later, I think in 1989, when he finally put it all together and called it Profound Knowledge. Because that was when a year, a month or so before he passed away, he set up the Deming Institute. I think he thought he was ready now to leave behind a legacy that others could build upon, right?   0:14:08.0 Balaji Reddie: And so that he called it... Again, I'm looking for the missing link here—. Apparently, when he wrote it, as he called it deep knowledge, but it was someone who gave him the word profound, and that's how the name stuck. So I'm still trying to find out who did that. I saw this in one of the letters to Henry Neave, where he was writing to all of his colleagues, he called them, and taking feedback from them. And in that, he said that, "I profess this is deep, this is wide." And somebody said, "It's profound." I forget. I really want to find out who it is. I asked Bill Scherkenbach, and he said, no, it wasn't him. Henry, of course, no. I asked Bill Latzko, and he said, "No way. I never said that." So I really don't know who said it, but he christened it "profound." And we all know now, it sounded very pompous to begin with when you hear profound, and then you say, "Wait a minute." When you start getting into it, you say, "He's right. There's no other word to describe this. It is profound." So what exactly is Profound Knowledge? Now, it's a different way of looking at things around you. And especially he designed this or created this for man-made systems, organizations that you and I work in, helping us to look at things differently, right? And that's why he said it's a different lens. And when you see things differently, you ask different questions, right? When you ask different questions, you get different answers. When you get different answers, you draw different conclusions. When you draw different conclusions, you take different decisions. And when you take different decisions, that's when you get different results. It's insanity to expect different results by asking the same questions every single time. All right.   0:15:53.8 Balaji Reddie: Now, what exactly is, again, what do you mean by this whole thing, the lens? He brought together four seemingly disconnected sciences, right? He never invented any single one of them, but he saw the interconnections. All right. And the four sciences, he felt that if you had good knowledge, working knowledge of these four sciences, you need not be an expert in them, just enough for you to understand what's going on around you. All right? And in no order of importance, he had his title for each of those sciences. One was he called it appreciation for a system, which I would like to say very simply is connectedness, right? Because when people say systems thinking, okay, then you have the systems thinking experts who jumped into the picture. And I think they were caught napping. To be quite honest, Andrew, I think the people from the world of management were suddenly caught napping, and the experts were completely caught napping because they realized they'd missed the bus. Here's this man who caught everything together and put it into place, right? And so when they were... When they said systems thinking, so the systems experts came in and started trying to find out, "Oh, but he missed out on this, and he's confusing this with that." That's where it is. Dr. Deming knew where to start. All right? He said, "Yes, of course, it's all about systems, appreciation for a system, the fact that nothing exists in isolation." So I would like to say connectedness. Everything's connected to everything. When you start having that systemic approach, you realize you're not dealing with events, you're dealing with eventualities, and that there are always a huge myriad of inputs that create the outputs that you see in front of your eyes, right? And there's so many other attributes that they're separated in time and space, et cetera. We can talk for this forever. But the short word here is connectedness. Second...   0:17:56.1 Andrew Stotz: And I would say that the systems experts retreated soon after because they're nowhere to be found when we look at it these days, because everything's divide and conquer.   0:18:07.6 Balaji Reddie: Yes. Yeah, because there were people like Russell Ackoff, Stafford Beer was mentioned many times, and then their books. Now, I went on to read their books and I found, yes, they were going deep, but Dr. Deming knew where to draw the line and said, "That's it. Please don't go beyond this," and it depends on where you are, what you want to study. So draw your line around that and say that's it. And I think that thinking came from the next science which I'm talking about, which is understanding of variation, right? Now, although we say understanding of variation and people talk about the control chart, I think that's just the manifestation. If you look at the philosophy behind it, what Walter Shewhart actually was trying to do was to draw a line between when to act on the process and when to leave it alone, right? He came out with... He demarcated, and that's where it turned into the control chart with data. But broadly, Deming started applying this everywhere, right? He said that there are some things which are in my control and some things out of my control, and so he drew a line. And same with systems thinking, that how big and how deep should I go? And that's why he said every system must have an aim. Without an aim... So the aim and the purpose decide where you're gonna stop. You can't just keep on saying, "Oh, yeah, finally, okay, the whole world is a system." Fine, great, I get that. But I'm trying to study this, okay? My company, my organization, this process, these people. So you draw the line and say, "This is my purpose, so let me restrict." Again, I repeat, he knew where to stop. People tend to go overboard. And so he always said, "Begin with the aim, begin with the purpose." The purpose is the reason the system exists, and the aim is the direction in which you're headed. So you keep going there, keep revisiting that to let yourself remind yourself that I need to stop right here. Okay, and that's it. When I come to it later, because he said... Coming to the third part of Profound Knowledge, where he said you must have a theory of knowledge.   0:20:13.4 Balaji Reddie: Now, when people hear the word theory they get very put off. At least in my country, the broad doctrine is that theory is the opposite of practice. And so they think that theory belongs to the books and theory belongs at home. And when you come into the company, we all believe in being practical, right? And as you go through what Dr. Deming had to say about theory, you realize theory is a guide to better practice. And all the great practitioners are actually theorists. It's just that they don't know it, and we need to remind them. I've had enough of experience on this in my own company. And I remember when I turned on the light bulb for one of the very, very senior people in my company, he went completely quiet. He did not say anything, but I loved the way he reacted or responded to this when he started doing things very differently after the interaction that we had once. So that's with theory of knowledge. And...   0:21:19.9 Andrew Stotz: And would you say that theory of knowledge, would you correct my description of it, which is that you need to have a method of... You need to understand how you acquire knowledge?   0:21:40.1 Balaji Reddie: Yeah.   0:21:40.2 Andrew Stotz: And you gotta figure out, because acquiring knowledge, for instance, as an individual, we can play around lots of different ideas and experiments and stuff like that, but acquiring knowledge within an organization is a much harder thing. And so first is the idea that there's a level of rigor that you need in an organization to make knowledge stick.   0:22:06.9 Balaji Reddie: I think it's more about awareness. When you become aware of how you're converting information into knowledge. When you... He makes you aware of that, right? Dr. Deming gets you aware, he makes aware, "Okay, okay, wait, what's happening here?" Now, that method and all turned out to be the Plan-Do-Study-Act, whatever you call it. But he helped you understand how you're doing this, right? And you become cognizant. You get your cognitive behavior, you get very aware of things happening around you, right? You start asking the question, "Why? Why is this happening?" And then you get to the bottom of it. "Oh, when I do this, I get this." And that's when it becomes powerful for you. And then you also, "When I do this, I do not get this." And the more the theory fails, the more powerful it gets for you, because you know where it fails. So that's the awareness thing. So connectedness, being aware of the fact that it's beyond just numbers. It's about where, the variation bit, the third bit is about awareness, like I said, about learning, and the fourth, of course, about people. And he said here that all of us are born with a learning system, right? Each one of us has a learning system, a system of learning, but every single one of us has a different system of learning. We learn differently, and we learn at different speeds, at different paces, right? And so understanding the learning process of a person and then putting that person on the right job, right? He said you have to stop that person from working, and that's where joy in work comes in. People enjoy their work. I think the bottom line there is empathy when you start understanding why people do what they do, whether it's your people in the company, the customers, your suppliers, the entire system. So he says the learning process of every person needs to be understood. You want to control the market, you need to understand what makes the customer tick. You want to keep the suppliers with you, you want to understand what makes the suppliers tick, right? And what makes them tick.   0:24:23.3 Balaji Reddie: So that's the fourth part, which I would put as the word empathy. Trying to empathize. So putting this all together, he said that's what he called as Profound. So if you look at it in a broad sense, connectedness and empathy are very philosophical, and the variation and theory are very scientific. So he wanted us to be scientific and philosophical simultaneously. It's not either-or, it's and. And that's difficult to do, right? You have the big divide. You have a set of people who say, "Oh, I believe only in data. Show me the data, show me the results." And then there's a whole other set of people who says, "You gotta feel. You gotta feel for the company. Motivate." Yeah, but neither is wrong, but neither is complete. And this is complete. So this is where I found that I think we could begin, that we need to look at all these four sciences together. And of course, then came the 14 points which he laid out for us. Now, these 14 points, now if you look at them, because I just discussed the four... Of course, I've not gone into depth of each of the sciences, but I think good enough to understand what we are trying to deal with here, then you'd see that the 14 points are actually 14 consequences of this way of thinking. That you don't try to do the 14 points. When you start thinking this way, you end up with the 14 points, right? And there are some things which need to be done, right, and we need to start somewhere with this. And one of the main things that he always said is that people need to be educated about this, that people need to learn about this. And so education and training is important even when it comes to profound knowledge. And he said someone has to take the lead, all right? Someone has to get things done. And so that was his point number 14, that create a critical mass of people in the company that understand, believe, and will work towards these 14 points, right? So I'm gonna begin right there.   0:26:43.1 Andrew Stotz: I was just thinking about his saying, "One need not be an expert in any one point, [chuckle] any one of these areas." With the System of Profound Knowledge, the more I've studied it recently, which I've been working on a project recently where I had to go back to the System of Profound Knowledge, you really see that he's trying to provide a coherent, holistic system.   0:27:16.1 Balaji Reddie: Yes. I call it as a theory of leadership and management.   0:27:23.6 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And then you start to realize that if you can understand these four things, which isn't that... It doesn't have to be that complex, it can be pretty amazing. And I know one part of my business is investing, which I do on behalf of my clients. And one of the things that makes me stand out as unique is that I don't get distracted by the random variation in the markets. And so that doesn't mean that I'm gonna get it right all the time, but what it means is that my mind is much more clear when I understand. And as I tell people about variation, I say, if you think about just your birth, the beginning of your life is a random event. You had no influence over that, who you were born of. And therefore we at least know that randomness plays one role in your life. But when you start exploring the possibility that randomness is all around you just like water, it just wakes you up and you start to realize, "Aha, I've been reacting to things," and punishing and rewarding and all of that stuff that's happening in companies. And what I'm really doing is I'm just chasing my tail. Or as Dr. Deming would say, putting out a fire. A man could run... A manager could run... Could put out fires their whole career and never improve the system.   0:29:02.8 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. A lot of activity, no work.   0:29:04.5 Andrew Stotz: Yeah.   0:29:06.2 Balaji Reddie: Okay. Incidentally, when you said about investing, one of my students who did something fascinating, I've yet to get to the bottom of it, I never sat down and asked him how he did it, but he used control charts for the stock market. And one day he explained to me, he was trying to rather, because I never... I'm not into all of that investing. That's done by my wife. I just sign the papers and she puts it in. So I... I mean, I might as well be shown the Constitution and say, "Okay, this is what it is," you know? But yeah, so he... I remember sharing with him and he said, "Can I use this for stock market?" I said, "Look, son, I don't know how this works, but I presume what you can do is this. If you had yesterday's Sensex numbers and you have today's, then you can draw a control chart for the differences, you know? And then you get an upper limit and a lower limit. And then if today's closing is so much, it can rise up to the upper control limit, that is the difference. You can add the difference to today's closing and say it can rise to so much, it can fall by so much, and likewise to the lower control limit." And then his eyes just lit up and he said, "I know what to do." And that was it. And I didn't meet him for a week. And a week later, I meet him and he says, "I want to show you something." And he opened his laptop and there were control charts all over the place and I just couldn't figure out, "So what was all this?" And then he said, "I've been following these. There are some blue chip companies and there are some..." I don't know, I don't understand these things much, but he said that, "I'm drawing a control chart for these and so I know that when it crosses the upper control limits, that's the max I can get for the share, so I sell."   0:30:55.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. I mean, the hard part... The stock market is purely random most of the time and it's a challenge. But one of the things... I gave a speech to my investors and I did control charts and I did it as a way of helping them understand the markets.   0:31:04.2 Balaji Reddie: Okay.   0:31:12.7 Andrew Stotz: To predict the markets is hard.   0:31:15.7 Balaji Reddie: It's hard.   0:31:16.4 Andrew Stotz: But the control chart allows us to kind of.. It allows us to understand that most of the variation is just normal ups and downs.   0:31:24.8 Balaji Reddie: Yes.   0:31:26.5 Andrew Stotz: And so don't freak out about it. That's the first thing that really helps me. So that area of variation I find very fascinating.   0:31:34.7 Balaji Reddie: Very fascinating. I used it for COVID data, by the way. And there was a lot of criticism about that, but I knew I was going in the right direction because I was plotting the charts for the percentage positive and not the number of cases that were being tested positive every day. And so if the percentage positive lay within limits, then we were safe. I mean, everyone wants a zero, I get that. But I'm just saying here, having said that we're collecting the data and we are turning out so much of positive every day, then it should lie within certain controllable or predictable limits. And when it crosses the limit is when we get a little worried. And that's what I used this for initially. I remember it was Lloyd Provost who stood by me, whereas the other practitioners were saying, "No, you cannot use control chart for COVID and for data and for epidemic and pandemic." Whereas Deming himself used it for an epidemic of cholera somewhere. I read it in his work and where he used the c-chart and he saw that areas where the points were outside limits and then they tested the water and well, well, whatever it was, it turned out to be that he found the special cause and blah, blah, blah. So that's what gave me the idea of using the control chart for COVID and it was quite fascinating.   0:32:56.5 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. Yeah, unfortunately there wasn't a lot of independent thinking during that time.   0:33:02.5 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. [laughter]   0:33:03.0 Andrew Stotz: Real serious groupthink at that time. So I had my experience in my PhD research and my job as an analyst all my life where... And I teach my students believe nothing, believe no one, demand evidence. And so I'm constantly digging and that's just the heart of being an analyst. But when I go back... I want to go back to when I was starting at Pepsi. The reason why my boss recommended me to go to the Deming seminar was simple because I knew how to work a computer. And that was 1989 when I went to work at Pepsi. And what I had, all of these loaders that were loading up trucks with Pepsi each night. We would load about 80, 90 trucks each night. And in the heat of the summer, we would work till 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, but generally we would finish at 11:00 or midnight. But they were just... I would go to the drivers in the morning and then the drivers would come back in the afternoon and complain that the product that they needed was not on the truck. And there was just... And I went to the loaders, they go, "I put it on the truck. I don't know what you're talking about." And so there was this battle between the night loaders and the truck drivers. And so what I just did originally was I just started... I did inspection. The first thing I did is I said, "Look, before you close the doors on the trucks at night, I just want to count myself to understand what's happening here." And then I started keeping a record of that and I put that in Excel, it was Lotus 1-2-3 at the time, and then I put up charts of each person's error rate each night. And so we had a long chart. And I never actually even told them what I was doing, I just put up on the wall. And then they started looking at it over time and talking about it and then asking me questions. And it wasn't for the purpose of blaming, it was the purpose of just understanding.   0:35:01.2 Andrew Stotz: But then what we really started to see was that some people were much more accurate than others. And then we started to ask the question, "Well, how are they doing it?" And then they explained how they kept records of what they were doing and all that. And so we started to see that we could improve this. And we started to improve those numbers quite dramatically until we got to the point where I told the loaders when they were done that they were to lock the trucks and seal them and the drivers were not allowed to open them. They had to take them as is. And when everybody realized we really have to build from the beginning that this is loaded right, then we started to have massive efficiency. In the number of... Let's say you have 50 or 100 truck drivers that come in at 5:00 in the morning. It could take you till 9:00 AM to get them out the door if they've got problems and they're checking their trucks and all that. But if you've got it set right and you've done it right, we were able to rush people through the door and the drivers would get out to the LA freeways much earlier and that makes a difference for the whole day. So that was my first experience with it all. And then my boss just said, "Well, seems like you know about statistical quality control." I said, "I have no idea. I have no idea what that is." But he said, "You should go to Washington, D.C. And study with Dr. Deming." And that's my little story.   0:36:20.4 Balaji Reddie: Oh, wow. Okay.   0:36:21.6 Andrew Stotz: So how would we... What's the best way to wrap this up and think about what somebody who doesn't really necessarily have experience with the System of Profound Knowledge, you've given them some good overview. What would you like them to take away from this?   0:36:39.2 Balaji Reddie: Well, if you have now come to know about what this is, I think you could go to the W. Edwards Deming Institute website and you could subscribe and start looking into the learning pathways, systems thinking, there are a lot of catalogs available there and they've done a great job of putting things together. So they could do that reading, of course, you need to start reading, but the danger in reading Dr. Deming's work is it could put you off sometimes. And I would recommend a good place to start reading and understanding the Deming philosophy would be Henry Neve's book, The Deming Dimension. It's a very good start, one of the best introductions. You could always build upon that. So along with having Out of the Crisis, The New Economics, and Essential Deming, which was put together by Joyce Orsini, these are the three essential Deming books which contain papers, his own works, and then use Deming Dimension as a guide, so to say. You could read the books together and you could read profound knowledge to begin with. And once you get a good idea about what there is, then the question comes is where do we start? And that's where I just ended by saying that we start at point number 14 about creating a critical mass and take on leadership, right? So somebody has to take the lead. So what we could do is, I think the next time we meet, we could begin with that, how do we start? So we'll talk about the principles of leadership that W. Edwards Deming spoke of and what did he expect the leaders to do once you've decided or you've started seeing things differently and you say, "No, I need to do something about this. I need to start somewhere." And so we'll start with the principles of leadership. That's the way I look at it.   0:38:44.5 Andrew Stotz: Fantastic. Well, I look forward to our next conversation, how we can start to think about how we take this information and make a better world and make a better company, feel better. And so from everybody at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org and jump into DemingNext to continue your journey.   0:39:09.7 Balaji Reddie: Yes.   0:39:11.1 Andrew Stotz: It's an exciting tool. And this is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, and that is: "People are entitled to joy in work."

What if the problems plaguing your organization — low engagement, poor collaboration, stalled projects — aren't people problems at all? In this host episode, Cristina and Alex unpack one of the most misunderstood truths in leadership: the outcomes you're seeing are a direct result of the system you've built, not the humans inside it. Drawing on Stafford Beer's principle that "the purpose of a system is what it does," they challenge leaders to stop blaming people and start examining the structures, incentives, and practices that shape behavior in the first place.From organizational reshuffles that never fix the real problem, to the telling moment when employees start demanding "role clarity" (spoiler: it's never actually about the job description), Cristina and Alex trace how surface-level fixes leave root causes untouched. They also explore what happens when AI implementations suddenly expose the leadership gaps that humans had quietly been covering up for years — and why the real cost of a broken system only becomes visible when it's almost too late. If you're ready to stop plugging the nose and start asking what's actually causing the symptoms, this episode is your organizational Claritin.

In this candid and surprisingly funny host episode of Uncover the Human, Cristina and Alex tackle a big question hiding inside a very real 2026 reality: what is leadership actually for? As AI hype grows and organizations rush to replace people with bots, they challenge the assumption that strategy decks, frameworks, and PowerPoints are the real job of leaders. If AI can create the plan faster and better, what's left? The answer: the human work. Leadership isn't announcing decisions or reorganizing every 18 months—it's creating psychological safety, listening deeply, understanding the system you're operating in, and supporting people through change.They unpack why middle managers feel stuck in the “sandwich generation” of organizations, why so-called “listening tours” often aren't listening at all, and why true leaders are the ones people speak to, not the ones who speak the most. Drawing on Stafford Beer's idea that “the purpose of a system is what it does,” they explore how outcomes reveal the real system at play—no matter the stated strategy. If you've ever wondered why your big ideas don't stick, why friction keeps resurfacing, or what leadership really means in an AI-powered world, this episode is both a reality check and a hopeful reframe: leadership is influence, safety, and support—not title, noise, or control.

Der Titel der heutigen Episode ist: Digitale Kolonie oder Souveränität? Europa steckt in einer Reihe von Herausforderungen, eine davon ist, wie wir die immer durchdringendere Digitalisierung zu unserem Vorteil nutzen und die damit verbundenen Risiken minimieren können. Ich freue mich besonders, für dieses sehr wichtige Thema zwei Gesprächspartner zu haben: Wilfried Jäger und Kevin Mallinger. Wilfried hat in Wien technische Physik studiert und anschließend eine Postdoc-Stelle im Bereich „Industrial Policy” am MIT in den USA angenommen. Danach war er als Berater mit Schwerpunkt IT-Einsatz tätig. Seine Konzernlaufbahn konzentrierte sich auf physische Infrastrukturen, zunächst im Bereich Eisenbahn und später im Rechenzentrumsbetrieb. Diese Tätigkeit hatte er auch in der Verwaltung inne, bis er vor ca. 8 Jahren den Schwerpunkt auf KI in der Verwaltung legte. Seine Interessensschwerpunkte sind digitale Infrastrukturen und Open-Source-Software. Neben der beruflichen Tätigkeit, und dies ist für diese Episode ebenfalls sehr wichtig, hat er vor mehr als 15 Jahren den Verein OSSBIG mitgegründet, der das Thema Unabhängigkeit und Souveränität auf unterschiedlichen Ebenen propagiert. Kevin ist Leiter der Forschungsgruppe Complexity and Resilience und verantwortlich für die anwendungsorientiere Forschung im Forschungszentrum SBA Research in Wien.Er ist im Bereich der Informatik und Komplexitätsforschung  mit einem besonderen Schwerpunkt auf nachhaltige Technologien. Außerdem leitet er bei der Österreichischen Computer Gesellschaft die Arbeitsgruppe Informatik und Nachhaltigkeit. Digitale Souveränität ist aktuell in aller Munde, besonders in Europa, aber ist es schlicht ein Buzzword, alter Wein in neuen Schläuchen oder relevant und wichtig? Ich nehme in diesem Podcast von Buzzword-Themen Abstand. Daher ist es aus meiner Beobachtung eine wesentliche Diskussion, die wohl seit mindestens 25 Jahren schwelt, und gerade wieder gehyped wird, dennoch aber von fundamentaler Bedeutung ist. Aber zunächst gehen wir einen Schritt zurück: Viele Zuhörer sind keine Techniker — warum ist Software und digitale Souveränität überhaupt ein Thema? Vor einigen Jahrzehnten war es noch schwer, die gesellschaftliche Bedeutung in der Breite der Gesellschaft klar genug zu machen, auch wenn die technisch/ökonomische schon einigen klar war. So erklärt sich unter anderem auch die Gründung der OSSBIG, von der Wilfried erzählt.  Digitalisierung hat nun die gesamte Gesellschaft sehr offensichtlich in jeder alltäglichen Dimension durchdrungen — damit werden auch Abhängigkeiten und Gefahren in der Breite deutlicher. Was ist somit unter der Plattformisierung digitaler Infrastrukturen zu verstehen? Was sind die Folgen? Die gesamte Prozesskette ist ungleich komplexer geworden und damit natürlich auch die Fortpflanzung von Fehlern und Abhängigkeiten ausgeprägter. Hinzu kommt der evolutionäre Aspekt von Technik, das heißt, Neues wird immer auch auf Altem aufgebaut, was neue Herausforderungen mit sich bringt. Diese Situation ist eben keine rein technische mehr, sondern ist zu einer komplexen Gemengelage aus technischen, geopolitischen, militärischen und wirtschaftlichen Themen geworden. Das macht die Sache natürlich nicht einfacher. Wie sehen wir digitale Souveränität und Autonomie? Wer ist souverän, in welcher Hinsicht? Welche Rolle spielen andere Schlagworte in diesem Umfeld, etwa Komplexität, Open Source und Open Protocol, Netzwerkeffekte? Ein Indikator für die Explosion an IT-Services und Diensten und daraus folgender Komplexität: »Wir haben IPV6 eingeführt, weil wir mussten — das hat mehr IP-Adressen als es Atome im Weltall gibt.« Welche Rolle spielen Marktmechanismen in diesem Kontext? Wie werden neue Technologien eingeführt? Was können wir aus der Vergangenheit lernen? »Aus Spaß wird Ernst und aus Ernst wird Infrastruktur.« Technik ist meist ein zweischneidiges Schwert: »Auf der einen Seite gewinnen wir Freiheiten, auf der anderen Seite schaffen wir Abhängigkeiten auf einer anderen, meist systemischen Ebene.« Diese Abhängkeiten, diese Infrastruktur muss heute sogar global betrachtet werden. Single Points of Failure sind nicht mehr theoretisch, sondern immer wieder zu beobachten. »Durch die Komplexität verlieren wir den Überblick.« Abhängigkeiten gehen weit über die IT hinaus und sind teiweise zirkulär. Was bedeutet dies konkret? Software ist zwar ein virtuelles Gut, aber wird dadurch noch schneller weltumspannend wirksam. Wie wirkt Evolution in der Software? innerhalb einer Organisation marktwirtschaftlicher Wettbewerb zwischen Unternehmen Open Source — wir funktioniert Evolution hier? Welche Auswirkungen hat das auf Eigentumsrechte, Verantwortlichkeit, Motivation, Zentralität vs. Dezentralität? Wer hat noch Kontrolle über die Systeme, die entwickelt werden und die sich evolutionär weiterentwickeln? Es kommen wieder die häufig genannten Fragen auf: Wo findet Steuerung und Kontrolle statt und wo soll sie vernünftigerweise stattfinden? Kann man Komplexität überhaupt sinnvoll zentralisieren? »Der Steuerungsmechanismus kann nicht weniger komplex sein als das System selber.« Kehren wir also wieder zu den frühen kybernetischen Erkenntnissen und Problemen zurück? Das wurde von W. Ross Ashby (und Stafford Beer) als Law of Requisite Variety bezeichnet. Was ist Edge Computing? Wie können verteilte Ansätze hier weiterhelfen? Aber wie schafft man die Abwägung zwischen größeren strategischen Überlegungen und operativen taktischen Entscheidungen? Wie lösen wir das Koordinationsproblem? Warum ist es weiter problematisch, Open Source und kommerzielle Software klar trennen zu wollen? Was ist nun die Überlappung zwischen Open Source/Protocol und Souveränität? »Souveränität bedeutet, dass ich genügend Handlungsoptionen in einem komplexen Umfeld habe. Jeder Mechanismus, der mir das ermöglicht, erhöht meine Souveränität.« Was sind Software-agnostische Daten? Was sind Protokolle und warum sind solche, die sich als Standard etabliert haben, kaum mehr wegzubekommen? Was bedeutet dies im Kontext der digitalen Souveränität? Software — alles schnell, Programme von gestern spielen keine Rolle mehr, jeden Tag eine neue App? Oder läuft wesentliche Software über Jahrzehnte, oder noch länger? Und die Daten, mit denen operiert wird, haben noch wesentlich längere Lebenszyklen. Wie gehen wir im Zeitalter der Digitalisierung damit um? Es gibt auch in der Privatindustrie Beispiele, wo Geschäftsfälle Daten und Code über ein Jahrhundert gewartet und betrieben werden müssen. Was bedeutet dies vor allem auch für die gesellschaftliche Kontrolle dieser Infrastrukturen. Ich provoziere: Wenn wir aber der Realität der letzten Jahrzehnte ins Auge blicken so sind wir (in Europa) nicht längst eine digitale Kolonie und versuchen jetzt den Zwergenaufstand? Kein einziges der weltweit größten 25 Unternehmen (die ersten zehn fast ausschließlich IT-Unternehmen) ist europäisch und auch in einer Bewertung kritischer Technologien und deren Führerschaft spielt Europa keine Rolle. Haben wir also in Europa in allen wesentlichen Aspekten den Anschluss verloren? Was gibt es überhaupt noch zu tun? Wilfried bringt die »Gegenprovokation«: »Jedes System erlebt, bevor es zusammenkracht, seine große Blüte.« Wer wird gewinnen? Der Tyrannosaurus Rex oder die Säugetiere? Ist diese Metapher zutreffend? Welche unserer Provokationen gewinnt?

The Real Threat to "All We Hold Most Dear"

Maybe the answer really is to be found in early 1970's Chilean socialism…  The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions—and How the World Lost Its Mind By: Dan Davies Published: 2024 304 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? The development of accountability sinks, a construct used by governments, corporations, and really any large-scale organization to deflect responsibility (and potential punishment) away from individuals and into processes. As part of his critique and his hoped for solution Davies leans heavily into management cybernetics and Stafford Beer. If neither of those ring a bell perhaps you've encountered Beer's most famous saying, "The purpose of a system is what it does."  What's the author's angle? Davies sits in a weird place ideologically. He's a huge fan of Beer, and spends lots of time talking about Beer's partnership with Salvador Allende, the president of Chile in the early 70s. They partnered to create Cybersyn, a cybernetic management system for the whole economy. Davies admits it wouldn't have worked at the time, but seems to think that maybe with AI something like it might work now? On the other hand, in many places he seems to be channeling Taleb, and while I can't find anything by Taleb directly commenting on Cybersyn, I'm confident he would not be a fan. Davies also levels significant criticism at Milton Friedman, which makes sense in the Chilean context, but it feels out of character for a soberly written business book.  Who should read this book? I read it as part of a Slate Star Codex/Astral Codex Ten book club. If that means anything to you, you'll probably find the book interesting. Additionally, anyone looking for another way to describe the hidden brokenness of the world will probably enjoy the book.  What does the book have to say about the future?

For this episode of Liminal Library, I interviewed Dan Davies about The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions—and How the World Lost Its Mind (U Chicago Press, 2025). Davies examines how we've systematically engineered responsibility out of our institutions, creating a world where major decisions happen without clear human accountability. Davies draws on Stafford Beer's cybernetics to explain how modern organizations function as systems with their own patterns and responses. As he puts it, "the system is not conscious and so does not have incentives, but it has consistent patterns of response to stimuli." This isn't about individual moral failures – it's about the industrialization of decision-making itself. We've moved from Harry Truman's "The Buck Stops Here" to complex processes and standardized criteria that diffuse responsibility across multiple layers. When things go wrong – financial crises, environmental failures, social breakdowns – no single person can be held accountable because no single person actually made the decision. Davies traces this transformation through three revolutions: the managerial revolution that shifted control from owners to professional administrators, the cybernetic revolution that offered tools to understand these systems but never fully materialized, and the neoliberal revolution that reshaped society while ignoring that increasingly, systems rather than people make the decisions affecting our lives. These accountability machines, as Davies calls them, operate according to their own logic and constraints. Understanding them is essential for grasping why institutional failures seem both inevitable and impossible to prevent within our current frameworks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

For this episode of Liminal Library, I interviewed Dan Davies about The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions—and How the World Lost Its Mind (U Chicago Press, 2025). Davies examines how we've systematically engineered responsibility out of our institutions, creating a world where major decisions happen without clear human accountability. Davies draws on Stafford Beer's cybernetics to explain how modern organizations function as systems with their own patterns and responses. As he puts it, "the system is not conscious and so does not have incentives, but it has consistent patterns of response to stimuli." This isn't about individual moral failures – it's about the industrialization of decision-making itself. We've moved from Harry Truman's "The Buck Stops Here" to complex processes and standardized criteria that diffuse responsibility across multiple layers. When things go wrong – financial crises, environmental failures, social breakdowns – no single person can be held accountable because no single person actually made the decision. Davies traces this transformation through three revolutions: the managerial revolution that shifted control from owners to professional administrators, the cybernetic revolution that offered tools to understand these systems but never fully materialized, and the neoliberal revolution that reshaped society while ignoring that increasingly, systems rather than people make the decisions affecting our lives. These accountability machines, as Davies calls them, operate according to their own logic and constraints. Understanding them is essential for grasping why institutional failures seem both inevitable and impossible to prevent within our current frameworks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

For this episode of Liminal Library, I interviewed Dan Davies about The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions—and How the World Lost Its Mind (U Chicago Press, 2025). Davies examines how we've systematically engineered responsibility out of our institutions, creating a world where major decisions happen without clear human accountability. Davies draws on Stafford Beer's cybernetics to explain how modern organizations function as systems with their own patterns and responses. As he puts it, "the system is not conscious and so does not have incentives, but it has consistent patterns of response to stimuli." This isn't about individual moral failures – it's about the industrialization of decision-making itself. We've moved from Harry Truman's "The Buck Stops Here" to complex processes and standardized criteria that diffuse responsibility across multiple layers. When things go wrong – financial crises, environmental failures, social breakdowns – no single person can be held accountable because no single person actually made the decision. Davies traces this transformation through three revolutions: the managerial revolution that shifted control from owners to professional administrators, the cybernetic revolution that offered tools to understand these systems but never fully materialized, and the neoliberal revolution that reshaped society while ignoring that increasingly, systems rather than people make the decisions affecting our lives. These accountability machines, as Davies calls them, operate according to their own logic and constraints. Understanding them is essential for grasping why institutional failures seem both inevitable and impossible to prevent within our current frameworks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

For this episode of Liminal Library, I interviewed Dan Davies about The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions—and How the World Lost Its Mind (U Chicago Press, 2025). Davies examines how we've systematically engineered responsibility out of our institutions, creating a world where major decisions happen without clear human accountability. Davies draws on Stafford Beer's cybernetics to explain how modern organizations function as systems with their own patterns and responses. As he puts it, "the system is not conscious and so does not have incentives, but it has consistent patterns of response to stimuli." This isn't about individual moral failures – it's about the industrialization of decision-making itself. We've moved from Harry Truman's "The Buck Stops Here" to complex processes and standardized criteria that diffuse responsibility across multiple layers. When things go wrong – financial crises, environmental failures, social breakdowns – no single person can be held accountable because no single person actually made the decision. Davies traces this transformation through three revolutions: the managerial revolution that shifted control from owners to professional administrators, the cybernetic revolution that offered tools to understand these systems but never fully materialized, and the neoliberal revolution that reshaped society while ignoring that increasingly, systems rather than people make the decisions affecting our lives. These accountability machines, as Davies calls them, operate according to their own logic and constraints. Understanding them is essential for grasping why institutional failures seem both inevitable and impossible to prevent within our current frameworks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

For this episode of Liminal Library, I interviewed Dan Davies about The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions—and How the World Lost Its Mind (U Chicago Press, 2025). Davies examines how we've systematically engineered responsibility out of our institutions, creating a world where major decisions happen without clear human accountability. Davies draws on Stafford Beer's cybernetics to explain how modern organizations function as systems with their own patterns and responses. As he puts it, "the system is not conscious and so does not have incentives, but it has consistent patterns of response to stimuli." This isn't about individual moral failures – it's about the industrialization of decision-making itself. We've moved from Harry Truman's "The Buck Stops Here" to complex processes and standardized criteria that diffuse responsibility across multiple layers. When things go wrong – financial crises, environmental failures, social breakdowns – no single person can be held accountable because no single person actually made the decision. Davies traces this transformation through three revolutions: the managerial revolution that shifted control from owners to professional administrators, the cybernetic revolution that offered tools to understand these systems but never fully materialized, and the neoliberal revolution that reshaped society while ignoring that increasingly, systems rather than people make the decisions affecting our lives. These accountability machines, as Davies calls them, operate according to their own logic and constraints. Understanding them is essential for grasping why institutional failures seem both inevitable and impossible to prevent within our current frameworks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For this episode of Liminal Library, I interviewed Dan Davies about The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions—and How the World Lost Its Mind (U Chicago Press, 2025). Davies examines how we've systematically engineered responsibility out of our institutions, creating a world where major decisions happen without clear human accountability. Davies draws on Stafford Beer's cybernetics to explain how modern organizations function as systems with their own patterns and responses. As he puts it, "the system is not conscious and so does not have incentives, but it has consistent patterns of response to stimuli." This isn't about individual moral failures – it's about the industrialization of decision-making itself. We've moved from Harry Truman's "The Buck Stops Here" to complex processes and standardized criteria that diffuse responsibility across multiple layers. When things go wrong – financial crises, environmental failures, social breakdowns – no single person can be held accountable because no single person actually made the decision. Davies traces this transformation through three revolutions: the managerial revolution that shifted control from owners to professional administrators, the cybernetic revolution that offered tools to understand these systems but never fully materialized, and the neoliberal revolution that reshaped society while ignoring that increasingly, systems rather than people make the decisions affecting our lives. These accountability machines, as Davies calls them, operate according to their own logic and constraints. Understanding them is essential for grasping why institutional failures seem both inevitable and impossible to prevent within our current frameworks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

Luise Meier über ihren Roman 'Hyphen' und kommunistisches Utopisieren. Future Histories LIVE Das Gespräch mit Luise Meier ist Teil des Formats ‚Future Histories LIVE‘. In unregelmäßigen Abständen werden hierbei einzelne Episoden live – soll heißen vor Publikum – aufgezeichnet. Diese Folge Future Histories ist am 3. August 2025 auf Einladung des Hamburger Künstler*innenkollektivs Zollo entstanden. Shownotes Luise Meiers Website: http://www.luisemeier.com/ Meier, L. (erscheint am 30.10.2025). Proletkult vs. Neoliberale Denkpanzer. Matthes & Seitz Berlin. https://www.matthes-seitz-berlin.de/buch/proletkult-vs-neoliberale-denkpanzer.html Meier, L. (2024). Hyphen. Matthes & Seitz Berlin. https://www.matthes-seitz-berlin.de/buch/hyphen.html Meier, L. (2018). MRX Maschine. Matthes & Seitz Berlin. https://www.matthes-seitz-berlin.de/buch/mrx-maschine.html Müller, T. (2024). Zwischen friedlicher Sabotage und Kollaps. Wie ich lernte, die Zukunft wieder zu lieben. Mandelbaum. https://www.mandelbaum.at/buecher/tadzio-mueller/zwischen-friedlicher-sabotage-und-kollaps/ Eiden-Offe, P. (2017). Die Poesie der Klasse. Romantischer Antikapitalismus und die Erfindung des Proletariats. Matthes & Seitz Berlin. https://www.matthes-seitz-berlin.de/buch/die-poesie-der-klasse.html zu Ernst Bloch: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Bloch Mazzini, S. (2012). Kältestrom – Wärmestrom. In: Dietschy, B., Zeilinger, D. & Zimmermann, R. (2012). Bloch-Wörterbuch: Leitbegriffe der Philosophie Ernst Blochs. De Gruyter. S.224-231. https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110256710.224/html zu „the purpose of a system is what it does” (POSIWID): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does zu Stafford Beer: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stafford_Beer zu Beers Teich-Computer Experiment: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YBbcKg5AeX3tot3cC/cybernetic-dreams-beer-s-pond-brain zu Kybernetik: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kybernetik https://monoskop.org/Cybernetics zu Alexander Bogdanov: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Alexandrowitsch_Bogdanow https://monoskop.org/Alexander_Bogdanov Völkel, M. (2024). Kybernetik in der Sowjetunion. Ein politisches und gesellschaftliches Modernisierungsprojekt? LIT Verlag. https://lit-verlag.de/isbn/978-3-643-15541-2/ Noorizadeh, B. (2018). After Scarcity. https://vimeo.com/296563987 zum theoretischen und politischen Konflikt zwischen Bogdanov und Lenin: https://jacobin.de/artikel/alexander-bogdanow-revolutionaerer-denker-und-sci-fi-pionier Sochor, Z. A. (1988). Revolution and Culture. The Bogdanov-Lenin Controversy. Cornell University Press. https://monoskop.org/images/6/6f/Sochor_Zenovia_Revolution_and_Culture_The_Bogdanov-Lenin_Controversy.pdf Bogdanov, A. A. (1923). Der rote Stern. Ein utopistischer Roman. Verlag der Jugendinternationale. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/62985 zum “Prolekult“: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletkult zu Cybersyn: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersyn https://www.the-santiago-boys.com/ Medina, E. (2011). Cybernetic Revolutionaries. Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile. MIT Prress. https://direct.mit.edu/books/monograph/2129/Cybernetic-RevolutionariesTechnology-and-Politics zu Salvador Allende: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Allende zum Putsch in Chile 1973: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putsch_in_Chile_1973 zu Victor Turner: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Turner Turner, V. (2005). Das Ritual. Struktur und Anti-Struktur. Campus Verlag. https://www.campus.de/buecher-campus-verlag/wissenschaft/kulturwissenschaften/das_ritual-2418.html zu Thomas Müntzer: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_M%C3%BCntzer zu Anatoli Wassiljewitsch Lunatscharski: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli_Wassiljewitsch_Lunatscharski zu Maxim Gorki: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxim_Gorki zum „Gotterbauertum“: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God-Building Thematisch angrenzende Folgen S03E44 | Anna Kornbluh on Climate Counteraesthetics https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s03/e44-anna-kornbluh-on-climate-counteraesthetics/ S03E33 | Tadzio Müller zu Solidarischem Preppen im Kollaps https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s03/e33-tadzio-mueller-zu-solidarischem-preppen-im-kollaps/ S03E32 | Jacob Blumenfeld on Climate Barbarism and Managing Decline https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s03/e32-jacob-blumenfeld-on-climate-barbarism-and-managing-decline/ S03E30 | Matt Huber & Kohei Saito on Growth, Progress and Left Imaginaries https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s03/e30-matt-huber-kohei-saito-on-growth-progress-and-left-imaginaries/ S02E26 | Andrea Vetter zu Degrowth und Technologie https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s02/e26-andrea-vetter-zu-degrowth-und-technologie/ S02E25 | Bini Adamczak zu Beziehungsweisen https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s02/e25-bini-adamczak-zu-beziehungsweisen/ S01E16 | Richard Barbrook on Imaginary Futures https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s01/e16-richard-barbrook-on-imaginary-futures/   Future Histories Kontakt & Unterstützung Wenn euch Future Histories gefällt, dann erwägt doch bitte eine Unterstützung auf Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/FutureHistories   Schreibt mir unter: office@futurehistories.today Diskutiert mit mir auf Twitter (#FutureHistories): https://twitter.com/FutureHpodcast auf Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/futurehistories.bsky.social auf Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/futurehpodcast/ auf Mastodon: https://mstdn.social/@FutureHistories   Webseite mit allen Folgen: www.futurehistories.today English webpage: https://futurehistories-international.com   Episode Keywords #LuiseMeier, #JanGroos, #FutureHistories, #Podcast, #Klimakrise, #Sozial-ökologischeTransformation, #Klimabewegung, #Kapitalismus, #Gesellschaft, #PolitischeImaginationen, #Zukunft, #Utopie, #Solidarität, #Literatur, #Kybernetik, #StaffordBeer, #Cybersyn, #AlexanderBogdanov, #ErnstBloch, #Marxismus, #Klimakollaps, #Kollaps

Jan Overwijk discusses critical systems theory, sociologies of closure and openness, and cybernetic capitalism.   Shownotes Jan Overwijk at the Frankfurt University Institute for Social Research: https://www.ifs.uni-frankfurt.de/personendetails/jan-overwijk.html Jan at the University of Humanistic Studies Utrecht: https://www.uvh.nl/university-of-humanistic-studies/contact/search-employees?person=jimxneoBsHowOfbPivN Overwijk, J. (2025). Cybernetic Capitalism. A Critical Theory of the Incommunicable. Fordham University Press. https://www.fordhampress.com/9781531508937/cybernetic-capitalism/ on the website of the distributor outside of North America you can order the book with a 30% discount with the code “FFF24”: https://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/9781531508937/cybernetic-capitalism/ on Niklas Luhmann: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklas_Luhmann Baraldi, C., Corsi, G., & Esposito, E. (2021). Unlocking Luhmann. A Keyword Introduction to Systems Theory. transcript. https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-5674-9/unlocking-luhmann/ Fischer-Lescano, A. (2011). Critical Systems Theory. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 38(1), 3–23. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0191453711421600 Möller, K., & Siri, J. (2023). Niklas Luhmann and Critical Systems Theory. In: R. Rogowski (Ed.), The Anthem Companion to Niklas Luhmann (pp. 141–154). https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/anthem-companion-to-niklas-luhmann/niklas-luhmann-and-critical-systems-theory/982BC5427E171D2BA0D14364377A40F5 on Critical Theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory on Cybernetics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics Future Histories explanation video on cybernetics (in German): https://youtu.be/QBKC9mM8-so?si=64v0OgBKV3xjXvLl on Humberto Matuarana: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humberto_Maturana on Francisco Varela: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Varela Maturana, H. R., & Varela, F. J. (1992). Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding. Shambhala. https://uranos.ch/research/references/Maturana1988/maturana-h-1987-tree-of-knowledge-bkmrk.pdf on Ferdinand de Saussure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Saussure on Post-Structuralism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-structuralism on the differentiation of society into subsystems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differentiation_(sociology) on Jaques Derrida: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida Bob Jessop on Luhmann and the concept of “ecological dominance”: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318543419_The_relevance_of_Luhmann%27s_systems_theory_and_of_Laclau_and_Mouffe%27s_discourse_analysis_to_the_elaboration_of_Marx%27s_state_theory Jessop, B. (2010). From Hegemony to Crisis? The Continuing Ecological Dominance of Neoliberalism. In: K. Birch & V. Mykhnenko (Eds.). Rise and Fall of Neoliberalism: The Collapse of an Economic Order? (pp. 171–187). Zed Books. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318524063_The_continuing_ecological_dominance_of_neoliberalism_in_the_crisis on Surplus Value in Marx and Marxism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_value on Louis Althusser: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Althusser Althusser, L. (2014). On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. Verso. https://legalform.blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/althusser-on-the-reproduction-of-capitalism.pdf on Stuart Hall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Hall_(cultural_theorist) on Capital Strikes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_strike on the concept of “rationalization” in sociology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(sociology) on Max Weber: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber Weber, M. (2005). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Routledge. https://gpde.direito.ufmg.br/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/MAX-WEBER.pdf Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. Profile Books. https://profilebooks.com/work/the-age-of-surveillance-capitalism/ on Surveillance Capitalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism on Herbert Marcuse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse Marcuse, H. (2002). One-Dimensional Man. Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Routledge. https://files.libcom.org/files/Marcuse,%20H%20-%20One-Dimensional%20Man,%202nd%20edn.%20(Routledge,%202002).pdf on Jürgen Habermas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Habermas on Jean-François Lyotard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Lyotard Lyotard, J.-F. (1988). The Differend. Phrases in Dispute. University of Minnesota Press. https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816616114/differend/ on Thermodynamics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamics on the Technocracy Movement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_movement Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid Modernity. Polity. https://giuseppecapograssi.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/bauman-liquid-modernity.pdf on New Materialism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_materialism on Gilles Deleuze: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze on Bruno Latour: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Latour on Donna Haraway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Haraway for criticisms of new materialism and associated tendencies and authors: Malm, A. (2018). The Progress of this Storm. Nature and Society in a Warming World. Verso. https://www.versobooks.com/products/574-the-progress-of-this-storm Brown, W. (2019). In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West. Columbia University Press. https://www.social-ecology.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/The-Wellek-Library-Lectures-Wendy-Brown-In-the-Ruins-of-Neoliberalism_-The-Rise-of-Antidemocratic-Politics-in-the-West-Columbia-University-Press-2019.pdf Hendrikse, R. (2018). Neo-illiberalism. Geoforum, 95, 169–172. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016718518302057 on N. Katherine Hayles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N._Katherine_Hayles Deleuze, G. (1992). Postscript on the Societies of Control. October. Vol. 59. (Winter 1992), 3-7. https://cidadeinseguranca.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/deleuze_control.pdf Brenner, R., Glick, M. (1991). The Regulation Approach. Theory and History. New Left Review. 1/188. https://newleftreview.org/issues/i188/articles/robert-brenner-mark-glick-the-regulation-approach-theory-and-history.pdf on the “Regulation School”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_school Chiapello, E., & Boltanski, L. (2018). The New Spirit of Capitalism. Verso. https://www.versobooks.com/products/1980-the-new-spirit-of-capitalism Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2000). Empire. Harvard University Press. https://monoskop.org/images/9/95/Hardt_Michael_Negri_Antonio_Empire.pdf on the Tierra Artificial Life Program: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tierra_(computer_simulation) on Gilbert Simondon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Simondon on Karen Barad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Barad on Post-Fordism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Fordism on Taylorism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management Srnicek, N. (2017). Platform Capitalism. Polity. https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=platform-capitalism--9781509504862 Hayek, F. A. (2014). The Constitution of Liberty. Routledge. https://ia600805.us.archive.org/35/items/TheConstitutionOfLiberty/The%20Constitution%20of%20Liberty.pdf van Dyk, S. (2018). Post-Wage Politics and the Rise of Community Capitalism. Work, Employment and Society, 32(3), 528–545. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017018755663 on Rosa Luxemburg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Luxemburg on Luxemburg's thought on imperialism: https://www.rosalux.de/en/news/id/44096/rosa-luxemburgs-heterodox-view-of-the-global-south Fraser, N. (2022). Cannibal Capitalism. How our System is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet and What We Can Do About It. Verso. https://www.versobooks.com/products/2685-cannibal-capitalism on Mariarosa Dalla Costa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariarosa_Dalla_Costa on the “Wages for Housework” Campaign: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wages_for_Housework Moore, J. W. (2015). Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. Verso. https://www.versobooks.com/products/74-capitalism-in-the-web-of-life on Stafford Beer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stafford_Beer Pickering, A. (2010). The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future. University of Chicago Press. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo8169881.html Foucualt's quote on socialist governmentality is from this book: Foucault, M. (2008). The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979. Palgrave Macmillan. https://1000littlehammers.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/birth_of_biopolitics.pdf Groos, J. (2025). Planning as an Art of Government. In: J. Groos & C. Sorg (Eds.). Creative Construction. Democratic Planning in the 21st Century and Beyond (pp. 115-132). Bristol University Press. https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/creative-construction   Future Histories Episodes on Related Topics S03E30 | Matt Huber & Kohei Saito on Growth, Progress and Left Imaginaries https://futurehistories-international.com/episodes/s03/e30-matt-huber-kohei-saito-on-growth-progress-and-left-imaginaries/ S03E29 | Nancy Fraser on Alternatives to Capitalism https://futurehistories-international.com/episodes/s03/e29-nancy-fraser-on-alternatives-to-capitalism/ S03E19 | Wendy Brown on Socialist Governmentality https://futurehistories-international.com/episodes/s03/e19-wendy-brown-on-socialist-governmentality/ S03E04 | Tim Platenkamp on Republican Socialism, General Planning and Parametric Control https://futurehistories-international.com/episodes/s03/e04-tim-platenkamp-on-republican-socialism-general-planning-and-parametric-control/ S03E03 | Planning for Entropy on Sociometabolic Planning https://futurehistories-international.com/episodes/s03/e03-planning-for-entropy-on-sociometabolic-planning/ S02E31 | Thomas Swann on Anarchist Cybernetics https://futurehistories-international.com/episodes/s02/e31-thomas-swann-on-anarchist-cybernetics/   --- If you are interested in democratic economic planning, these resources might be of help: Democratic planning – an information website https://www.democratic-planning.com/ Sorg, C. & Groos, J. (eds.)(2025). Rethinking Economic Planning. Competition & Change Special Issue Volume 29 Issue 1. https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/ccha/29/1 Groos, J. & Sorg, C. (2025). Creative Construction - Democratic Planning in the 21st Century and Beyond. Bristol University Press. [for a review copy, please contact: amber.lanfranchi[at]bristol.ac.uk] https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/creative-construction International Network for Democratic Economic Planning https://www.indep.network/ Democratic Planning Research Platform: https://www.planningresearch.net/ --- Future Histories Contact & Support If you like Future Histories, please consider supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/FutureHistories Contact: office@futurehistories.today Twitter: https://twitter.com/FutureHpodcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/futurehpodcast/ Mastodon: https://mstdn.social/@FutureHistories English webpage: https://futurehistories-international.com   Episode Keywords #JanOverwijk, #JanGroos, #Interview, #FutureHistories, #FutureHistoriesInternational, #futurehistoriesinternational, #NiklasLuhmann, #FrankfurtSchool, #CriticalTheory, #SystemsTheory, #Sociology, #MaxWeber, #Economy, #Capitalism, #CapitalistState, #Cybernetics, #Rationalization, #PoliticalEconomy, #DemocraticPlanning, #DemocraticEconomicPlanning, #Governmentality, #Ecology, #NewMaterialism, #Posthumanism, #CyberneticCapitalism, #Totality

In deze aflevering spreekt Piek Knijff met Felienne Hermans , hoogleraar vakdidactiek van de informatica, over discriminatie in programmeertaal, objectiviteit in de wetenschap en de rol die verhalen daarin spelen. Derk Wijkamp schuift aan.In deze aflevering komen de volgende namen voorbij:Byung-Chul Han (hoogleraar cultuurwetenschappen)Lorraine Daston (wetenschapshistorica)Peter Galison (wetenschapshistoricus en fysicus)Sandra Harding (filosoof)Stafford Beer (psycholoog)En deze publicaties worden genoemd:The Crisis of Narration - Byung-Chul Han (2024)Objectivity - Daston & Galison (2007)———————————Dit gesprek is opgenomen op 11 april 2025.Host: Piek KnijffRedactie: Team Filosofie in actieStudio en montage: De PodcastersTune: Uma van WingerdenArtwork: Hans Bastmeijer – Servion StudioWil je nog ergens over napraten? Dat kan! Neem contact op via info@filosofieinactie.nl.Meer weten over Filosofie in actie en onze werkzaamheden? Bezoek dan onze website of volgonze LinkedIn-pagina .

On the show today is part 2 of George and Louise's talk with Bernard Salt AM, Founder of The Demographics Group. They have a conversation on shifting populations, shifting priorities and what that means for the health sector. Australia's election delivers a result no pundits foresaw.The FDA is mandating the use of AI for their scientific reviews. What could this mean for stakeholders?Friend of Pulse Rachael Dunscombe suggests healthcare's complexity means that for AI governance to be successful we need to adopt principles espoused by cybernetics guru Stafford Beer in the 1950s.UK Q1 VC funding report stats are in and the results are not what you'd expect.George & Louise give a run-through of the 6 Megatrends impacting the health sector, according to a new report by NSW Health and CSIRO.Connect with Bernard on LinkedIn | Instagram | The Demographics GroupResources:What is Digital Health? Whitepaper by David Rowlands LinkHealth Megatrends Report, NSW Health & CSIRO LinkCall for Disclosure when using AI for patient comms LinkVisit Pulse+IT.news to subscribe to breaking digital news, weekly newsletters and a rich treasure trove of archival material. People in the know, get their news from Pulse+IT – Your leading voice in digital health news.Follow us on LinkedIn Louise | George | Pulse+ITFollow us on BlueSky Louise | George | Pulse+ITSend us your questions pulsepod@pulseit.newsProduction by Octopod Productions | Ivan Juric

Der Titel der heutigen Episode ist »Zeitlos«. Wie komme ich darauf? Die Motivation für diese kurze Episode der Reflexion ist eine Reihe von Tweets. Der erste war von Axel Bojanowski, dem — wie ich meine — führenden Wissenschaftsjournalisten im deutschsprachigen Raum. Er schreibt: »Der mit Abstand beste deutsche Wissenschaftspodcast ist Zukunft Denken« Natürlich freut mich eine solche Empfehlung aus derartig berufenem Munde ganz besonders. Es spornt auch an, weiter hart an diesem Projekt zu arbeiten. Es gab dann aber noch eine Reaktion eines Hörers, der den Aspekt der Zeitlosigkeit der Episoden betont hat. Das hat mich zum Nachdenken angeregt. Der erste Aspekt von Zeit ist ein eher banaler, aber einer, auf den ich gerne kurz eingehen möchte. Ich bekomme immer wieder Zuschriften, wo sich Hörer öfter neue Folgen wünschen. Warum das schwierig ist, erkläre ich in aller Kürze. Dann aber zu weiteren Aspekten der Zeitlosigkeit, die eher inhaltlicher Natur sind, denn dieser Kommentar hat mich zum Nachdenken gebracht zumal es einige Überschneidungen zu vorigen Episoden gibt. Was hat etwas das Zitat von Gerd Gigerenzer aus Episode 122 »Je größer die Unsicherheit ist, desto mehr Informationen muss man ignorieren.«  mit dem Zitat von Stafford Beer aus Episode 121 gemein? »Information and Action are one and the same thing« Zur Dimension der Informationsdichte kommt noch die Dimension der Zeit auf eine sehr interessante Weise hinzu. Je Größer die Unsicherheit, desto wichtiger ist also nicht nur die Auswahl der Parameter, der Daten, sondern auch die richtige Zeitlichkeit im Umgang mit dem Problem. Was bedeutet dies für News? Für den gesellschaftlichen und politischen Umgang mit komplexen Problemen? »Die relevanten Information entstehen Wochen, Monate, bei aktivistischen Großereignissen wie etwa Covid auch Jahre später. Diese geht dann aber im Lärm des nächsten Events unter.« Fortschritt und Entschleunigung haben aber eine durchaus interessante Gemeinsamkeit, wir Herfried Münkler bemerkt: “...Chance des Reflexionsgewinns durch Entschleunigung: Man kann die Bedeutung beim Treffen von Entscheidungen über größere Zeitspannen zu verfügen kaum überschätzen. und diese Zeitspannengewinn hängt nun einmal am Übergang vom mündlichen zum schriftlichen.” […]  »Man konnte nunmehr sehr viel komplexere Fragen zum Gegenstand von Beratungen machen, als das in den direkten partizipatorischen Formen der Antike möglich war. Und man konnte Herausforderungen und Probleme in längerfristigen Perspektiven ins Auge fassen.« Sind wir immer am Puls der Zeit? Oder sind wir eher am Puls des Rauschens? Warum gibt es keine Wissenschafts-News und warum ist es gerade in komplexen Zeiten wichtig, Abstand von schnellen Medien zu halten? Warum sind Bücher gerade in schnellen Zeiten von besonderer Bedeutung? Wie kann man die Welt in Schichten verschiedener Geschwindigkeiten begreifen? Stewart Brand bezeichnet dies als Pace Layering: »Build a thing too fast, and mistakes cascade. Build a thing at the right pace, and mistakes instruct. Build a thing too slow, and mistakes are forgotten, then endlessly repeated in the endless restarts. For instance, with infrastructure: Building a thing at the right pace steadily all the way to completion probably works best with: Continuity of control Protected and guided by continuity of oversight and Guided by continuously monitored undersight—from workers and early customers. Continuity is the key.« Was aber machen wir mit Systemen — um wieder auf Stafford Beer zurückzukommen — deren tatsächlicher Zweck sich vom deklarierten Zweck entfernt hat? Wir enden nochmals mit einem Zitat von Stewart Brand: »Fast learns, slow remembers.  Fast proposes, slow disposes.  Fast is discontinuous, slow is continuous.  Fast and small instructs slow and big by accrued innovation and by occasional revolution.  Slow and big controls small and fast by constraint and constancy.  Fast gets all our attention, slow has all the power.« Was haben Sie mitgenommen? Schreiben Sie mir! Referenzen Podcast Umfrage — Bitte teilnehmen! Andere Episoden Episode 122: Komplexitätsillusion oder Heuristik, ein Gespräch mit Gerd Gigerenzer Episode 121: Künstliche Unintelligenz Episode 119: Spy vs Spy: Über künstlicher Intelligenz und anderen Agenten Episode 104: Aus Quantität wird Qualität Episode 99: Entkopplung, Kopplung, Rückkopplung Episode 92: Wissen und Expertise Teil 2 Episode 84: (Epistemische) Krisen? Ein Gespräch mit Jan David Zimmermann Episode 80: Wissen, Expertise und Prognose, eine Reflexion Episode 49: Wo denke ich? Reflexionen über den »undichten« Geist Episode 47: Große Worte Episode 32: Überleben in der Datenflut – oder: warum das Buch wichtiger ist als je zuvor Fachliche Referenzen Tweet von Axel Bojanowski (2025) Herfried Münkler, Verkleinern und entschleunigen. Die Zukunft der Demokratie? ARD (2022) Stewart Brand, Pace Layering: How Complex Systems Learn and Keep Learning (2018) Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built, Penguin (1995)

Diese Folge von Future Histories ist eine Aufzeichnung der Buchvorstellung von 'Creative Construction - Democratic Planning in the 21st Century and Beyond'. Aufgezeichnet am 4. März 2025 im Aquarium am Südblock, Berlin. Die Diskussion wurde von Jonna Klick, Christoph Sorg und Jan Groos geführt. Jacob Blumenfeld übernahm die Moderation und Ko-Organisation. Danke!!   Shownotes Groos, J. & Sorg, C. (Hrsg.). (2025). Creative Construction. Democratic Planning in the 21st Century and Beyond. Bristol University Press. https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/creative-construction Brumaire Verlag: https://brumaireverlag.de/ Drau, I., & Klick, J. (2024). Alles für alle. Revolution als Commonisierung. Schmetterling Verlag. https://schmetterling-verlag.de/produkt/alles-fuer-alle/ Berfelde, R., & Blumenfeld, J. (2024). Von der Vergesellschaftung zur Planung und wieder zurück. PROKLA. Zeitschrift Für Kritische Sozialwissenschaft, 54(215), 177–193. https://www.prokla.de/index.php/PROKLA/article/view/2119 Blumenfeld, J. (2024a). Managing Decline. Cured Quail, Vol. 3. https://curedquail.com/Managing-Decline Christoph Sorg's Website: https://christophsorg.wordpress.com/ Das DFG Forschungsprojekt „Capitalist Planned Economies“ (CaPE): https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/523931583?context=projekt&task=showDetail&id=523931583& Jan Groos‘ Website: https://www.jan-groos.de/ueber/ Daum, T., & Nuss, S. (Hrsg.). (2021). Die unsichtbare Hand des Plans: Koordination und Kalkül im digitalen Kapitalismus. Dietz. https://dietzberlin.de/produkt/die-unsichtbare-hand-des-plans/ zur Conferedación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederaci%C3%B3n_Nacional_del_Trabajo zur Arbeiterselbstverwaltung im ehemaligen Jugoslawien: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbeiterselbstverwaltung Laibman, D. (2024). Multilevel Democratic Iterative Coordination (MDIC): A Path for Socialism beyond the Market/Central Planning Dilemma. World Review of Political Economy, 15(1). https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.13169/worlrevipoliecon.15.1.0004 zu „strategischem Management“: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategisches_Management das Juli 2024 Symposium zu „Planning, Democracy and Postcapitalism” in Montpellier: https://innovationsocialeusp.ca/en/event/international-symposium-planning-democracy-and-post-capitalism? zur Bandung-Konferenz: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandung-Konferenz UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development): https://unctad.org/ zu Johanna Bockman: https://soan.gmu.edu/people/jbockman Menon, N. (2022). Planning Democracy. How a Professor, an Institute, and an Idea Shaped India. Penguin. https://www.penguin.co.in/book/planning-democracy/ Devine, P. (2010). Democracy and Economic Planning. Polity Press. https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=democracy-and-economic-planning--9780745634791 Holland, S. (Hrsg.). (1987). Beyond Capitalist Planning. Spokesman Books. https://spokesmanbooks.org/product/span-stylefont-size-14pxbeyond-capitalist-planningspan/ zu Karl Georg Zinn: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Georg_Zinn zum Meidner Plan in Schweden: https://jacobin.de/artikel/rudolf-meidner-der-radikale-reformer-sozialdemokratie-meidner-plan-olof-palme Herrmann, U. (2022). Das Ende des Kapitalismus: Warum Wachstum und Klimaschutz nicht vereinbar sind – und wie wir in Zukunft leben werden. Kiepenheuer & Witsch. https://www.kiwi-verlag.de/buch/ulrike-herrmann-das-ende-des-kapitalismus-9783462007015 Monnet. E. (2022). Economic Planning and War Economy in the Context of Ecological Crises. Géopolitique, Réseau, Énergie, Environnement, Nature. Nr.2. https://geopolitique.eu/en/articles/economic-planning-and-war-economy-in-the-context-of-ecological-crisis/ zu Otto Neurath: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Neurath Malm, A. (2020). Corona, Clima, Chronic Emergency. War Communism in the Twenty-First Century. Verso Books. https://www.versobooks.com/products/2726-corona-climate-chronic-emergency?srsltid=AfmBOopCynAI9ExjEyM3afkrHjnImg1Jm6FZJlM-WpPNCnxW9OFcdODK Dyer-Witheford, N. (2013). Red Plenty Platforms. Culture Machine. Vol.14. https://culturemachine.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/511-1153-1-PB.pdf Mazzucato, M. (2023). Das Kapital des Staates. Eine andere Geschichte von Innovation und Wachstum. Campus. https://www.campus.de/buecher-campus-verlag/wirtschaft-gesellschaft/wirtschaft/das_kapital_des_staates-17562.html Medina, E. (2014). Cybernetic Revolutionaries. Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile. MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262525961/cybernetic-revolutionaries/ zum Viable System Model von Stafford Beer: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_System_Model zu Claus Offe: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claus_Offe Sorg, C. (2023). Failing to Plan Is Planning to Fail: Toward an Expanded Notion of Democratically Planned Postcapitalism. Critical Sociology, 49(3), 475-493. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/08969205221081058 Roediger, D. R. (2022). The Wages of Whiteness. Race and the Making of the American Working Class. Verso Books. https://www.versobooks.com/products/2966-the-wages-of-whiteness?srsltid=AfmBOor8SkRvz6R9Us-sV0X8KbM1Kgx19KsUaalsFo5DxO-9UxTpN6Eg zur “Socialist Calculation Debate”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_calculation_debate Grünberg, M. (2023). The Planning Daemon: Future Desire and Communal Production. Historical Materialism, 31(4), 115-159. https://brill.com/view/journals/hima/31/4/article-p115_4.xml zum Begriff des „Phantombesitzes“ bei Eva von Redecker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUQcOETh_y0 Rochowicz, N. (2025). Planning progress: Incorporating Innovation and Structural Change into Models of Economic Planning. Competition & Change, 29(1), 64-82. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10245294231220690 Rikap, C. (2021). Capitalism, Power and Innovation: Intellectual Monopoly Capitalism Uncovered. Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Capitalism-Power-and-Innovation-Intellectual-Monopoly-Capitalism-Uncovered/Rikap/p/book/9780367750299?srsltid=AfmBOoohn2o3_THE5S57rt4kTs62Fp3kv5AUNj8rUTdn7ywK9LFhfEro Thematisch angrenzende Folgen S03E32 | Jacob Blumenfeld on Climate Barbarism and Managing Decline https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s03/e32-jacob-blumenfeld-on-climate-barbarism-and-managing-decline/ S03E34 | Cecilia Rikap on Intellectual Monopoly Capitalism and Corporate Power in the Age of AI https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s03/e34-cecilia-rikap-on-intellectual-monopoly-capitalism-and-corporate-power-in-the-age-of-ai/ S03E33 | Tadzio Müller zu solidarischem Preppen im Kollaps https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s03/e33-tadzio-mueller-zu-solidarischem-preppen-im-kollaps/ S03E29 | Nancy Fraser on Alternatives to Capitalism https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s03/e29-nancy-fraser-on-alternatives-to-capitalism/ S03E24 | Grace Blakeley on Capitalist Planning and its Alternatives https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s03/e24-grace-blakeley-on-capitalist-planning-and-its-alternatives/ S03E21 | Christoph Sorg zu Finanzwirtschaft als Planung https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s03/e21-christoph-sorg-zu-finanzwirtschaft-als-planung/ S03E18 | Indigo Drau und Jonna Klick zu Revolution als Commonisierung https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s03/e18-indigo-drau-und-jonna-klick-zu-revolution-als-commonisierung/ S02E42 | Max Grünberg zum Planungsdämon https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s02/e42-max-gruenberg-zum-planungsdaemon/ S02E38 | Eva von Redecker zu Bleibefreiheit und Demokratischer Planung https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s02/e38-eva-von-redecker-zu-bleibefreiheit-und-demokratischer-planung/ S02E19 | David Laibman on Multilevel Democratic Iterative Coordination https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s02/e19-david-laibman-on-multilevel-democratic-iterative-coordination/   --- Bei weiterem Interesse am Thema demokratische Wirtschaftsplanung können diese Ressourcen hilfreich sein: Demokratische Planung – eine Infoseite https://www.demokratische-planung.de/ Sorg, C. & Groos, J. (Hrsg.).(2025). Rethinking Economic Planning. Competition & Change Special Issue Volume 29 Issue 1. https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/ccha/29/1 Groos, J. & Sorg, C. (Hrsg.). (2025). Creative Construction - Democratic Planning in the 21st Century and Beyond. Bristol University Press. https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/creative-construction International Network for Democratic Economic Planning https://www.indep.network/ Democratic Planning Research Platform: https://www.planningresearch.net/   --- Future Histories Kontakt & Unterstützung Wenn euch Future Histories gefällt, dann erwägt doch bitte eine Unterstützung auf Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/FutureHistories   Schreibt mir unter: office@futurehistories.today Diskutiert mit mir auf Twitter (#FutureHistories): https://twitter.com/FutureHpodcast auf Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/futurehistories.bsky.social auf Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/futurehpodcast/ auf Mastodon: https://mstdn.social/@FutureHistories   Webseite mit allen Folgen: www.futurehistories.today English webpage: https://futurehistories-international.com   Episode Keywords #CreativeConstruction, #ChristophSorg, #JanGroos, #JonnaKlick, #JacobBlumenfeld, #FutureHistories, #Podcast, #Postkapitalismus, #Sozialismus, #Kommunismus, #Markt, #DemokratischePlanung, #Vergesellschaftung, #PostkapitalistischeReproduktion, #Planungsdebatte, #DemokratischePlanwirtschaft, #Investition, #Transformation, #KapitalistischePlanung, #Marktsozialismus, #Meidner-Plan, #Markt-Koordination, #Utopie  

Why is it seemingly so difficult to find a human to speak to when having an issue with your bank or mobile phone company? And if you do, why do they sound like robots and/or aren't empowered to make a decision that will solve your problem? More broadly and worryingly, why is it nearly impossible to hold an individual accountable for decisions that led to a major societal or organisational calamity like the Global Financial Crisis, or the UK's Post Office Scandal? Something is going on, and today, we're going to talk about it. My guest is author Dan Davies, and we are talking about his latest book, The Unaccountability Machine - Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions and How the World Lost Its Mind. The book was long-listed for the Financial Times and Schroder's Business Books of the Year. Dan is a former investment banker turned author. His previous book, Lying for Money, was about the 2008 global financial crisis in which no banker went to jail. Dan became interested in why that was the case and to see if the same types of causes for that exist elsewhere. And they do. And it led him to write The Unaccountability Machine. Dan also has a wonderful term called the “accountability sink”, in which a human system delegates decision-making to a rule book rather than an individual, which means that when something goes wrong, no one is to blame. We get into all of that and so much more. Show notes: -The Unaccountability Machine: https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/ -Dan's newsletter: https://backofmind.substack.com/ -Dan's author page: https://profilebooks.com/contributor/dan-davies/ -Lying for Money: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38605195-lying-for-money?from_search=true -Dan's previous appearance on the podcast: https://allthingsrisk.libsyn.com/ep-89-dan-davies-lying-for-money -Stafford Beer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stafford_Beer -Brian Eno: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Eno -“Designing Freedom”, Stafford Beer's lectures from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNVZ3IuNlXY&list=PLW6YNX5jIRDEvjZz0_icNAaelHXArzfc- -Norbert Wiener: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Wiener -Neural Networks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_network_(machine_learning) -Variety engineering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_(cybernetics) -Good regulator in management cybernetics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_regulator -Ben Recht: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~brecht/bio.html -Jen Pahlka's Recoding America: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61796680-recoding-america -William Butler Adams / Brompton Bicycles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Butler-Adams _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Learn more about The Decision-Making Studio: https://thedecisionmaking.studio/ All our podcast episodes are here: https://thedecisionmaking.studio/podcast  Our latest newsletter: https://us19.campaign-archive.com/?u=f19fc74942b40b513cf66af32&id=1e2a6c0ea9   

In this episode we are discussing Cybernetic Revolutionaries by Eden Medina (MIT Press, 2011), which examines the effort to create a cybernetic system of communication and industrial management during the socialist government of Salvador Allende in Chile, from 1970 to 1973. Medina uses this fascinating case study to explore the relationship of two utopian visions: one socialist, and one technological, embodied in figures such as British cybernetics pioneer Stafford Beer and Fernando Flores, a member of Allende's government and advocate of Beer's ideas. Links to references in the episode: La Batalla de Chile Elizabeth Stainforth and Jo Lindsay Walton, 'Computing Utopia: The Horizons of Computational Economies in History and Science Fiction,' Science Fiction Studies, 46:3 (2019) --------------------------------------------------------------- You can keep in touch with the podcast our email abcwithdannyandjim@gmail.com, and Twitter ⁠⁠⁠⁠@abcdannyandjim⁠⁠⁠⁠. You can subscribe to our newsletter here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://abcwithdannyandjim.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ The podcast music is Stealing Orchestra & Rafael Dionísio, 'Gente da minha terra (que me mete um nojo do caralho).' Reproduced from the Free Music Archive under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License, available here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/35ToW4W⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ The podcast logo is an adapted version of the Left Book Club logo (1936-48), reproduced, edited and shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International licence. Original available here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/35Nd6cv⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. The image in this episode is one of Stafford Beer's schematics for the Cybersyn project, which was displayed in the central operations room in Santiago.

Subscribe, Rate, & Review on YouTube • Spotify • Apple Podcasts✨ About This EpisodeHow can we design virtuous technologies while acknowledging the complexity and unintended consequences of technological innovation?How can we foster curiosity, playfulness, and wonder in a world increasingly dominated by anxiety and technological determinism?This week on Future Fossils (as a teaser for the kind of conversations I am having for my upcoming spin-off Humans On The Loop), I meet with Stockholm-based transdisciplinary technologist, facilitator, complexity researcher, founder of The Psychedelic Society, and once upon a time the youngest-ever board member of Greenpeace UK, Stephen Reid to discuss the importance of taking a more values-driven approach to technology development. Stephen and I agree that it's crucial to consider the potential consequences of technological advancements and to promote a more thoughtful approach to innovation…but for the sake of playing with tension, he places more of an emphasis on our capacity for axiological design whereas I feel more of a need to point out that the rapid evolution of technology can outpace our ability to predict its consequences, troubling efforts to design an enduringly sustainable future. One thing we agree on, and model in this episode, is the value of deeper conversations about the role of technology in society…and how to integrate their transformative potentials.PS — I'm guest lecturing for Stephen's upcoming four-week course on Technological Metamodernism soon, along with Alexander Beiner and Hanzi Freinacht and Ellie Hain and Rufus Pollock. We'll engage critically with ideas like Daniel Schmachtenberger's axiological design and Vitalik Buterin's d/acc. As usual I'm probably the odd duck in this lineup, going hard on epistemic humility and the injunction of digital media to effect a transformation of the modern self-authoring ego into networked, permeable, transjective sub-agencies arising spontaneously and fluidly from fundamentally noncomputable interactions of rapid information flows... Anyway, the point is we'd love to have you join us and sink your teeth into these discussions! I absolutely promise to bring up voting cyborg ecotopes. Big thanks to Stephen for inviting me to play!PPS — Here is another really good, very different conversation between me and Stephen and Alistair Langer on Alistair's show Catalyzing Radical Systems Change.(Editorial Correction: It was Mike Tyson, not Muhammad Ali, who said "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.")✨ Support This Work• Hire me as a consultant or advisor• Become a patron on Substack or Patreon• Help me find backers for Humans On The Loop• Buy the books we discuss from my Bookshop reading list• Buy original paintings and prints or commission new work• Join the conversation in the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation and Future Fossils Discord servers• Buy the show's music on Bandcamp — intro “Olympus Mons” from the Martian Arts EP & outro “Sonnet A” from the Double-Edged Sword EP• Make one-off donations at @futurefossils on Venmo, $manfredmacx on CashApp, or @michaelgarfield on PayPal✨ Chapters(0:00:00-0:10:29) Stephen's Background and Interests in Technology and Metamodernism (0:10:29-0:18:03) Navigating the Complex Relationship Between Technology and Human Values (0:18:03-0:25:18) The Limits of Axiological Design and the Importance of Community Oversight (0:25:18-0:34:29) Defining and Defending Axiological Design (0:34:29-0:45:03) Exploring Alternative Governance Structures: Guilds and Rites of Passage (0:45:03-0:56:36) Vitalik Buterin's "Defensive Decentralized Accelerationism" (0:56:36-1:06:04) Integrating Humor and Recognizing Irony in the Technosphere(1:06:04-1:12:17) Recovering Awe, Curiosity, and Playfulness in a Tech-Saturated World (1:12:17- 1:12:56) Finding Lightness in the Face of Existential Questions (1:12:56-1:13:28) Exploring The Future and A Call to Action✨ MentionsIain McGilchrist, Daniel Schmachtenberger, Hanzi Freinacht, Josh Schrei, Ken Wilber, Vitalik Buterin, Bayo Akomolafe, Cory Doctorow, Nora Bateson, Dave Snowden, W. Brian Arthur, J. F. Martel, Stafford Beer, Rene Descartes, Bill Plotkin, Joe Edelman, Ellie Hain, Douglas Rushkoff, Robert Kegan, Aldous Huxley, Andrés Gomez Emilsson✨ Select Related Episodes (also available as a Spotify playlist)223 - Timothy Morton, 220 - Austin Wade-Smith219 - Joshua Schrei217 - Gregory Landua and Speaker John Ash214 - Megan Phipps, JF Martel, Phil Ford213 - Amber Case, Michael Zargham212 - Geoffrey West, Manfred Laubichler187 - Kevin Welch, David Hensley178 - Chris Ryan176 - Richard Doyle, Sophie Strand, Sam Gandy174 - Evan Snyder172 - Tyson Yunkaporta166 - Anna Riedl165 - Kevin Kelly163 - Toby Kiers, Brandon Quittem141 - Nora Bateson122 - Magenta Ceiba109 - Bruce Damer094 - Mark Nelson086 - Onyx Ashanti080 - George Dvorsky076 - Technology as Psychedelic Parenting066 - John Danaher060 - Sean Esbjörn-Hargens056 - Sophia Rokhlin051 - Daniel Schmachtenberger050 - Ayana Young042 - William Irwin Thompson017 - Tibet Sprague This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

Economist Dan Davies makes his debut on the pod this week, to talk about his latest book, "The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions - and How The World Lost its Mind".  The book examines the social and political conditions of the last years of neoliberal politics, and how technology is used not to improve people's lives meaningfully, but to obscure power.  Dan explains his theories on 'accountability sinks' , and how it can be applied to both macroeconomics and internet culture. He then explains how an old theory of cybernetics and information distribution, first posed by the British theorist Stafford Beer, may hold a solution to the accountability crisis – and might be one of the only methods to combat the emerging far right.  ----more----Purchase or order a copy of Dan's book, here: https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/  Read Dan's substack, here: https://backofmind.substack.com/ -------- PALESTINE AID LINKS As the humanitarian crisis continues to unfold in Gaza, we encourage anyone who can to donate to Medical Aid for Palestinians. You can donate using the links below. Please also donate to the gofundmes of people trying to escape Rafah, or purchase ESIMs. These links are for if you need a well-respected name attached to a fund to feel comfortable sending money. https://www.map.org.uk/donate/donate https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/how-you-can-help/emergencies/gaza-israel-conflict -------- PHOEBE ALERT Can't get enough Phoebe? Check out her Substack Here! -------- This show is supported by Patreon. Sign up for as little as $5 a month to gain access to a new bonus episode every week, and our entire backlog of bonus episodes! Thats https://www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast -------- Ten Thousand Posts is a show about how everything is posting. It's hosted by Hussein (@HKesvani), Phoebe (@PRHRoy) and produced by Devon (@Devon_onEarth).  

“Viable System Model” expert Mark Lambertz joins us on today's podcast to help us unfold organizing in complex ecosystems.  Mark, a long-time Agile practitioner and a renowned expert on the Viable System Model has a deep understanding and a curious mindset toward all things organizing. We met Mark as an Organizational Coach at Bosch, where he's driving the adoption of key concepts of the VSM. From his extensive experience, Mark has helped us understand how to use the VSM lens to build autonomous and self-sustaining organizational systems.  He takes us through the model's components and practical applications and compares it with other organizational frameworks that we use widely, more specifically, Boundaryless' Rendanheyi-inspired implementation of the Platform Organization with the 3EO Framework.  The conversation - where we discover a lot of resonance between the two perspectives - is filled with valuable insights from the ground and helps you move towards a more inclusive model that balances operational efficiency with strategic adaptability. Tune in, and don't miss out.  As one of the first attempts to use cybernetics in organizational management, the Viable System Model was conceived by Stafford Beer in his book - “The Brain of the Firm” in the 70s. Mark connects the dots in this podcast and explains why cybernetics is important for building adaptive organizations. The podcast highlights the importance of viewing organizations as adaptive, complex ecosystems emphasizing decentralization, coordination, and collective and emergent strategic planning.  He takes us through the depths of VSM, explaining how it starts with an outside-in perspective, focusing on the environment, and then further breaks down the 5 systems within VSM.  In this conversation, you get practical insights into incorporating a VSM informed perspective in your organization, helping you stay dynamic and ever-evolving.   Key Highlights

This is the inaugural episode of an on-going mini-series for the Riskgaming podcast we're dubbing the Orthogonal Bet. Organized by our scientist-in-residence Sam Arbesman, the goal is to take a step back from the daily machinations that I, Danny Crichton, generally host on the podcast to look at what Sam describes as “…the interesting, the strange, and the weird. Ideas and topics that ignite our curiosity are worthy of our attention, because they might lead to advances and insights that we can't anticipate.” To that end, today our guest is Matt Webb, a virtuoso tinkerer and creative whose experiments with interaction design and technology have led to such apps as the Galaxy Compass (an app that features an arrow pointing to the center of the universe) and Poem/1, a hardware clock that offers a rhyming poem devised by AI. He's also a regular essayist on his blog Interconnected. We latched onto Matt's recent essay about a vibe shift that's underway in the tech world from the utopian model of progress presented in Star Trek to the absurd whimsy of Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Along the way, we also discuss Neal Stephenson, the genre known as “design fiction,” Stafford Beer and management cybernetics, the 90s sci-fi show Wild Palms, and how artificial intelligence is adding depth to the already multitalented. Episode Produced by Chris Gates Music by George Ko & Suno

Мало кого из тех, кто становится тимлидом, жизнь как-то к этому готовила. Управлению людьми и командами редко учат в университетах, работа рядовым программистом тоже не приносит нужных знаний. Мы решили помочь всем текущим и будущим руководителям и записали выпуск с разбором всех областей знаний, в которых нужно разбираться. Сразу предупреждаю – наш гость, Виталий Шароватов, копает максимально глубоко, поэтому подготовьтесь к обсуждению теории массового обслуживания и психологии рабочего труда! Также ждем вас, ваши лайки, репосты и комменты в мессенджерах и соцсетях!
 Telegram-чат: https://t.me/podlodka Telegram-канал: https://t.me/podlodkanews Страница в Facebook: www.facebook.com/podlodkacast/ Twitter-аккаунт: https://twitter.com/PodlodkaPodcast Ведущие в выпуске: Евгений Кателла, Катя Петрова, Стас Цыганов, Егор Толстой Полезные ссылки: Практика без теории До Зиммельвейса все врачи практиковали родовспоможение грязными руками https://www.historymed.ru/encyclopedia/doctors/index.php?ELEMENT_ID=4948 Карго-культы в IT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-dvO2sLaZk&list=PLFtS8Ah0wZvWS37oveJ0-D5K6V7GWUpqY&index=28 Физиология труда https://www.ozon.ru/product/psihofiziologiya-professionalnoy-deyatelnosti-umstvennyy-trud-uchebnoe-posobie-studentam-880854493/ http://repo.ssau.ru/bitstream/Uchebnye-izdaniya/Rukovodstvo-po-fiziologii-truda-Elektronnyi-resurs-ucheb-posobie-76477/1/Ведясова%20О.А.%20Руководство.pdf Психология труда https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/81696897.pdf https://urait.ru/book/psihologiya-truda-530652 Организационная психология https://urait.ru/book/organizacionnaya-psihologiya-425235 http://elibrary.sgu.ru/uch_lit/2256.pdf Социология труда https://www.isras.ru/files/File/publ/Toschenko_Zvetkova_soc_truda.pdf Теория систем https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ackoffs-Best-Classic-Writings-Management/dp/0471316342 Научпоп про мотивацию https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0033TI4BW Теория исследования операций https://www.amazon.com/Platform-Change-1st-Stafford-Beer-ebook/dp/B0C3XVYVK6 Кибернетика https://royallib.com/book/viner_norbert/kibernetika_ili_upravlenie_i_svyaz_v_givotnom_i_mashine.html

Ever wondered how the complexity of Language Modeling (LLMs) and cybernetics can revolutionize the way we communicate and interact? Are you curious about the sociopolitical implications of such advancements? Join us in an enlightening discussion with the well-versed Mark Rainey, as we dissect these technologies and their potential impact on our society.Our journey begins with an exploration of LLMs, their potential, and inherent limitations. We discuss the nuanced logic of human language, Boolean operators, and their influence on the design of these systems. We then shift gears to delve into the intriguing world of cybernetics, viable systems, and the behavioralist and cognitivist wars. We scrutinize the implications of these advancements and the tests used to measure intelligence, all the while contemplating the potential and pitfalls of Stafford Beer's Viable System Model. As we navigate further, we probe into the relationship between technology and Marxism, questioning the teleological feedback loop of capital and its effects on the proletariat. We also explore the exciting realm of cybernetic planning and the potential role of LLMs in such systems. Finally, we reflect on the concepts of agency, alienation, class dynamics, and the implications of capitalism on social reproduction. This rich and riveting conversation with Mark Rainey is not to be missed! Support the showCrew:Host: C. Derick VarnAudio Producer: Paul Channel Strip ( @aufhebenkultur )Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.Intro Video Design: Jason MylesArt Design: Corn and C. Derick VarnLinks and Social Media:twitter: @skepoetYou can find the additional streams on Youtube

Want a cool cucumber salad? Joël's got you covered. Stephanie has evolved and found some pickles she enjoys. Experienced programmers use a lot of heuristics or "rules of thumb" about what makes their code better. These aren't always true, but they work in most situations. Stephanie and Joël discuss a range of heuristics, how to use them, how to come up with them, how to know when to break them, and how to teach them to more junior devs. Pickled mustard seeds (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLMFGk7Ylw0) The purpose of a system is what it does (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does) Intro to empirical software engineering by Hillel Wayne (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WELBnE33dpY) Transcript: STEPHANIE: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Stephanie Minn. JOËL: And I'm Joël Quenneville. And together, we're here to share a bit of what we've learned along the way. STEPHANIE: So, Joël, what's new in your world? JOËL: So, as of the recording of this, summer is in full swing, and it's the time of year where we have all these, you know, fresh vegetables out, so I've been really enjoying a lot of those. I think this week; in particular, I've been going into, like, all the variations on cucumber salads. STEPHANIE: Ooh. JOËL: Yeah. So, that's been kind of fun for me. A fun thing I've been doing to spice this up is pickling mustard seeds to add as a topping. That's actually really amazing. It adds just a little bit of acidity, a little bit of crunch, a little bit of texture. And it's pretty. STEPHANIE: That sounds so delicious. And also, I was going to share something about pickles about what's new in my world. [laughs] But first, I am curious, what has been your go-to cucumber salad that you put this pickled mustard seed situation on top? JOËL: So, cucumbers and tomatoes is just the base of everything. And then, it kind of goes with random things I have in my fridge. A little bit of goat cheese on top can be a great topping, big fan of balsamic glaze. You can just get, like, a bottle of that at the grocery store, the pickled mustard seeds. I've recently been trying topping with a fried egg. STEPHANIE: Ooh, that sounds really fun. It kind of, like, adds a bit of savoriness and creaminess and maybe even, like, the crunchy fried edges. That sounds really yummy. JOËL: Particularly if you do it over easy where the center is not fully cooked. When the egg breaks, you effectively get salad dressing for free. STEPHANIE: That sounds so delicious. JOËL: Summer vegetables, they're great. STEPHANIE: They are great. Last year, I did have a cucumber garden, as in a garden, and a few cucumber plants that were too prolific for me, to be honest. I found myself overrun with cucumbers and having to give them away because we just didn't eat them enough. And this year, we scaled back a little bit [laughs] on the cucs. But I am so excited to bring up what's new in my world now because it's, like, so related, and we did not plan this at all. But I have a silly little thing to share about my own pickle journey. So, I used to be a pickle hater. JOËL: You know what? Same. STEPHANIE: Oh my gosh, incredible. Another new thing we've learned about each other. I really, like, wanted to like pickles because, you know, when you order a sandwich in a restaurant, it always comes with the pickle spear. And neither me nor my partner were into pickles, and we would always leave the spear uneaten on the plate, and we felt so bad about it. I felt really bad about it. And so, every, like, three to six months or so, I'd be like, okay, I'm going to gather the courage to try the pickle again and see if maybe my taste buds have changed, and this time I'll like it. And, you know, I would try a bite and just be like, no, no, I don't think it's for me. [laughs] But I guess I was just so primed to do something about, like, wanting to eliminate this really inconsequential food waste. But every time it happened, I would just, you know, [laughs] be, like, oh, if only I loved pickles. And I got my friend, who is a pickle connoisseur, to help me figure out, like, what pickles I might like. So, I asked her to come up with, like, a pickle sampler for me because I really hadn't tried all too many. And that actually really helped me find which ones were a little more palatable to me. So, I found out that I liked the sweeter ones. There's, like, a bread and butter pickle that can be quite sweet. Your diner pickle can be very different from a jar of, like, fancy pickles. [laughs] JOËL: Definitely. STEPHANIE: One day, she gifted me a jar of, like, Polish gherkins that were delicious. JOËL: Hmmm. STEPHANIE: I was like, wow, I can just snack on these. So, the thing that's new is that this time, I went to an Eastern European grocery store, and I bought my own jar of pickled gherkins. And that was something that Stephanie, like, two years ago, would never even do. [laughs] JOËL: That's really cool that you got a chance to sort of explore a broader range of what was available in the pickle world and then were able to find kind of your niche there and discover something new that you actually like. STEPHANIE: Yeah, it was very fun. And now I feel like my whole world has opened up to, you know, pickley and fermented things and just, like, get to enjoy even more snacks. So, to move away from pickles, recently, on my client project, I've been pairing a lot more with other client developers. And one thing that has come up is, you know, talking about our reasoning or our thought process for when we're pairing on some code. And I realized that I have built up a lot of either intuition or maybe some rules that I like to follow when I'm writing code, writing a test, or even doing a code review. And I've realized that you know, as developers, we often use these kinds of shortcuts or heuristics to help orient us as we're doing our work. JOËL: Yeah. I think that's definitely something that either comes yourself from experience or sometimes is passed along, and you get to benefit from somebody else's experience. They learned the hard way a lot of these tips and tricks, and now they kind of pass on some of these guidelines to us. Do you have any favorites that you reach for frequently? STEPHANIE: So, one way I like to approach a problem is to start messy [laughs] and to kind of see what that gets me and then where to go from there. I find that it's a little bit easier for me to draw on things that I've, you know, learned or picked up and tips once I have something in front of me to react to. So, maybe I will just go with the naive implementation and just write all of the code in one method, you know, in a class. And from there, now that it's out of my system, can I kind of come back in with a finer tooth comb and then apply more of a sustained effort to clean things up, right? And, to me, the question I find myself asking is, like, can this be extracted further? And so, you know, if I have everything in one giant method, then yes, [laughs] there is likely, you know, many opportunities to extract that, and maybe I will see something like, oh, the way that I spaced out this code that might be a signal to me that, like, these are some ideas that are grouped together, and I can pull something out there. JOËL: Do you have a heuristic around when to stop extracting? STEPHANIE: That's a good point. I think I tend to stop when I have kind of pulled out the classes that make sense to me. And, at that point, you know, like, maybe there is more extraction that can be done. But at a certain point, you know, you then get these really tiny classes that maybe don't hold their weight. And I think that's also true of methods that then call other methods, and that's the only thing that they do. Then it's like, well, is this too extracted that it's not really giving a future reader helpful information, right? I want the extraction to improve readability. And that tends to be another lens through which I am applying to this idea of, like, can I extract further? Is this extraction helpful for understanding this code? JOËL: I like the idea of looking at the code through multiple lenses. And so, sometimes you look at it through the lens of, yeah, are there enough moving parts here? Or does it feel kind of brittle and all in one place? And then sometimes completely shifting your lens and saying, you know what? Let's put myself in the seat of someone who's looking at this code for the first time. Can I understand it? So, structuring and extracting code is a big part of the work that we do. And I also happen to have a couple of heuristics that I like to use. One is separate branching code from doing code. So, if I have an if...else condition, I try not to put ten lines of logic inside each branch; instead, I have just a call out to a method so that the only thing the conditional does is to choose which path you go, and then each individual path is its own method. Similarly, if I'm writing a method, I'm not going to have a bunch of logic then a conditional mixed in together. So, my heuristic is a method gets to do one of two things. It either gets to choose a path to take or it gets to do a thing, but you can't mix and match both. STEPHANIE: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I really appreciate a well-named method that is, you know, determining, like, what condition needs to happen because then that helps me, yeah, like, avoid having to hold all of this information about this condition or this other condition, and this other condition in order to figure out what path I'm trying to take. JOËL: And the naming and the readability, I think, is a big part of this. Another heuristic that I like to use that kind of converges on the same result is trying to write each method at a single level of abstraction. So, if I am writing a method that has some kind of high-level terms it's using, I'm not going to also mix in a lot of low-level implementation. And then, similarly, if it's a method that's doing a lot of, like, low-level nuts and bolts things, I'm going to try not to pull in some of these higher-level domain name methods in there. And so, by separating things out so that every method reads one level of abstraction, you make it much easier for the reader to go through and figure out what's happening. Are we kind of getting that more 10,000-foot view, getting a sense of what's happening, and saying, okay, we want to process the user form, and then we want to send off an email, and then we want to, you know, write to a file? Or are we going through, okay, we're going to increment a counter so that we get exponential back off on our [inaudible 10:28] request? Those two things do not belong together in the same method. STEPHANIE: Yeah, absolutely. I really like this heuristic. And I have been applying it more and more and found it really useful for making sure that you're handling your errors correctly, especially because, at different levels of abstraction, you want to do different things with your errors, right? An implementation error that's raised because, you know, you're calling something accidentally on nil, or maybe a third-party service is down, and you get a custom error, whatever that is, those concerns are different from how you want to handle things at the controller level. And oftentimes, I see those things really mixed together, and honestly, I think leads to a lot of buggy code when you're trying to handle things that can go wrong at the wrong level of abstraction. JOËL: Yeah. Is there a good heuristic around what level you think is best to trigger an exception? Or maybe, more generally, just being aware of different levels of abstraction and knowing that catching or triggering errors at each level will have different impacts. STEPHANIE: I think more of the latter, the having an awareness of what kinds of errors might be possible and what impact that has on the user, right? The user being either an actual customer or, you know, another developer who has to read a notification from an error monitoring service. [laughs] JOËL: This is really interesting to me because I think we've now bridged the concept of heuristics into the idea of mental models. So, the heuristic is write your methods at a single level of abstraction, but that then leads into a mental model where maybe code is structured in three or four different layers. You've got a low level, a mid-level, a high level, something like that, of abstraction. And now, you can use that mental model to start thinking about what are the impacts of exceptions at each layer? And then, maybe you complete the circle by creating a heuristic that relies on that mental model, maybe, I don't know, raise in the low-level rescue at the top level or something. I'm making something absolutely arbitrary up right now. But somehow, we've gone from heuristic, which creates a mental model, which then allows us to build new heuristics on top of that, and that seems like a virtuous cycle to me. STEPHANIE: Yeah, absolutely. I think what I'm also picking up is the idea that you do need a mental model, or you do need to draw on your own ideas about something in order to apply the heuristic, right? You know, someone could tell you to separate branching code from doing code. But maybe you don't know what that means or, like, maybe you don't see why that's important. And sure, you can still apply it and try your best to follow it. But, in some ways, I think that the best heuristics are ones that you've kind of developed for yourself based on your own experience. JOËL: That's really interesting. I think once you've built from your own experience, I definitely feel like they're really impactful because you've kind of synthesized 2, 5, 10, 20 years of experience doing some of this work into, oftentimes, like, you know, a pithy one-line sentence, 5, 6 words that convey an approach that you've found works best, you know, maybe 80% or 90% of the time. The power of synthesis for your own self-learning I think it's really hard to understate. So, I'm curious if there's any other heuristics that you commonly use that you kind of created yourself based off your own experience rather than just having it be more of a broadly received idea from the community. STEPHANIE: I think, for me, it's more so that the experience has helped affirm certain heuristics and also made me feel more comfortable with letting others go. And one that I heard a lot but, like, didn't quite understand until really working through it deeper is the idea of feeling pain when you write a test, and that being a signal of opportunities to try different design with your code. And I just didn't know what that pain was at the beginning. Like, what does that even mean? [laughs] Like, how can a test cause me pain? But on my own, I realized, oh, like, actually, I get really frustrated when I need to stub out a whole method chain, right? And I find myself having to go look up how to do that or just spending a lot of time having to do something that I haven't done before. Maybe the pain comes from having to change a lot of files because, oh no, like, I also broke 20 other tests in the process. But when you're first starting out, oftentimes, you, like, don't know that that is not normal [laughs]; at least, that was true for me. And so, that was something that I had heard about, like, if you are feeling pain when writing a test, then, like, maybe reconsider your code design. But when you don't know how to identify what that pain is, and you also, like, don't know where to go from there, I find that, you know, the heuristic can only help you so much. JOËL: Yeah. Maybe that's something that's challenging with a heuristic in that they're often expressed as these pithy sentences. But if you're not familiar with some of the underlying concepts, that might make them harder to apply, which is unfortunate because, oftentimes, these heuristics that we've developed as a community are targeted to newcomers to help them kind of avoid the mistakes that we've made along the way. STEPHANIE: I think what really helped me the most in connecting a heuristic that's commonly expressed and my own experience is when I've had someone ask me about how I'm feeling when I'm, you know, making some kind of decision or when I'm reading some code. Like, what do I think of this, or what has been my experience with this? And giving me the opportunity on the spot to synthesize that information. Because otherwise, it's hard to figure out, you know, like, what is just normal? This is just life as a developer [laughs]. And what are opportunities to maybe gain some more insight about the work itself? JOËL: One thing that I've learned over time as a developer, and I'm not sure if this quite rises to the level of a heuristic, but a lot of, like, pain and frustration in development doesn't necessarily have to be that way. And it's not necessarily because I'm bad at the job or I'm too new to the technology or whatever. It can often be a sign of underlying design issues or the fact that the system was modeled with certain assumptions that are no longer true. These can often be signals that you can make things better. So, I think if I had to reduce this idea down to a clever one-liner, it'd be something along the lines of, it can be better, or it doesn't have to be this bad. You're writing a test, and it's really annoying. There might be a better way to structure the underlying code that would make the test better. You're having to do some, like, really clunky code to deal with something. Is there maybe a better object design that would make a lot of that pain go away, or at least kind of quarantine it in a certain part of the codebase? STEPHANIE: I actually think you're really onto something because what I was just hearing, I love that, like, it can be better. It's less prescribed, I guess, than some other heuristics, like, you know, do not repeat yourself, or whatever. JOËL: Classic. STEPHANIE: [laughs] It really encourages, like, the individual to think a little deeper. And it actually reminded me of another...this is actually a bit of a pithy saying, but I find it to be really useful. And I'm curious if you've heard it before. It's a systems thinking heuristic, and the phrase is, the purpose of a system is what it does. JOËL: Ooh, I have heard that, and I'm trying to remember what context. STEPHANIE: So, it was coined by a systems thinking expert. Stafford Beer, I think, is his name. And I recently learned about it from a friend. But I think the cool thing is that it can be applied to literally anything [laughs] because everything is a system, you know, or not just software. But I have found a lot of value in applying it to just, like, is this function doing what it says it does, right? Or is it actually also doing, like, a side effect? And turns out, maybe we want to bring that into alignment with what the name of the function is, or try pulling that out, or whatever. I think it can also be true of test suites. I don't know if this is a heuristic or not. But the idea that we should always be testing or all tests are good, yeah, I guess that could pass as a heuristic. By bringing this perspective of the purpose of a system is what it does, it's like, well, is the test suite also so bloated and takes so long and so flaky that it is actually hindering development? And if that is the case, then maybe there is some reevaluation necessary, right? Rather than just claiming that it's helping us have more confidence in our code when that may or may not be true. JOËL: You brought up an interesting idea here, which is that heuristics aren't always right. So, you're talking about the idea that a heuristic like good code is tested code might not be correct in 100% of the cases. Like, how accurate does a heuristic need to be in order for it to be really valuable? You know, you're hoping for something that's, like, 90% correct that you can follow most of the time, except in some edge cases, or something maybe as low as, like, 50% where it's a coin toss whether the heuristic applies in the situation or not. Are those still useful? Or are they maybe more confusing than otherwise? STEPHANIE: Oh wow. That's a really interesting way to frame it because I don't know if I've ever stored information about how well my heuristics are serving me. [laughs] But I do really like the idea that you can use a heuristic as a guiding principle just to try and that you can always back out of it, right? So, if you're wanting to take DRY to the extremist of extremes, just for fun or just to see how that might go, you can go down that path and, at any point, decide, okay, like, I like this, or I don't like this, and choose a different path. But the idea of kind of tracking, like, how well they're working for you that is really interesting to me, and not something I've tried before. JOËL: I love the idea of taking a heuristic and, like, doing a side project whose whole goal is just to kind of push that heuristic to the extreme, to the breaking point so that, that way, you get an intuition of, like, when does it work for you? When does it not? That sounds like a really fun exercise for someone to do. Is that something that you've done yourself? STEPHANIE: Not to the point of a whole side project, but just like I like to try pickles randomly every now and then to see if I like them, [laughs] will just try a new technique and see how it goes. In an episode a while back, we talked about whether we TDD or not, and, to be honest, I don't do it, you know, 100% of the time or all the time. But one day, I did decide to TDD a full-stack feature from start to finish just for fun [laughs], and I enjoyed it. I learned some things about it. And I think now I've kind of integrated the parts that I liked about it into my development flow. Like, I'm not always going to do it. But I think it also just helped me figure out, like, okay, like, what is this thing about that people claim that is the pinnacle of how we should be writing our code? And how can I decide for myself, like, whether it works for me or just pick and choose the parts of it that work for me? JOËL: Yeah. That just seems like a really valuable exercise. There are definitely too many heuristics out there to do that for everything. But I guess I've never thought of it quite so concretely. But I almost wonder if I should, like, add this to my kind of personal growth plan to say, like, once a year, I'm going to take a heuristic and kind of push it to an extreme and see what I can learn about it. STEPHANIE: I actually think what's really cool is the process of, like, any individual developer figuring out what kinds of heuristics they want to follow, as opposed to, you know, like, a mass proclamation that, like, this is the way, right? Are there any heuristics that you have maybe picked up and then let go of because you realized that, you know, they weren't working enough or frequently enough for you or that you just didn't like? JOËL: I don't know about, like, fully letting go, but definitely kind of recontextualize and sometimes even sort of rewrote them a little bit to work for me. So, a classic one would be the idea that shorter code is more readable. So, it's common to see comments on a pull request sort of like, "Hey, you could make this shorter by doing this." And that can be true to a certain extent. When you get to the point where you're playing code golf, it becomes absolutely unreadable. But also, there's a point where sometimes using some other heuristics will result in longer code but actually make it more readable on the whole. And so, packing everything into one method might be overall shorter, so it's fewer lines to read going through a class. But maybe extracting some methods or doing that separating branching code from doing code might lead to an overall longer class but an also overall more readable one. So, I think there's probably a lot of caveats that go with that idea. Oftentimes, shorter can be more readable with, you know, two or three asterisks that maybe go a little bit more into the why that is the case. STEPHANIE: Yeah. I like the contextualizing. That actually reminded me of a talk that I watched recently by Hillel Wayne. It's called Intro to Empirical Software Engineering. And he basically, like, does a deep dive into all these studies about software practices that we think are, quote, unquote, "good," like, as a community or as an industry. And it's like, well, like, how do we actually know? Like, show me the research, right? And one of the studies that he included was trying to determine if using abbreviations for variable names or using the full words made the code easier to debug or not. And so, the main example that he was using was employee number as a variable, and the abbreviation was EMP num. And it turns out that there was no difference in how easy it was to debug. But the approach that each group that was studied differed. So, the folks who had the full names, the full words for the variable names, were kind of using an approach of just scanning the code and being able to understand at a higher level the domain, right? Whereas the folks who were debugging with just abbreviations had to work at a bit of a lower level and, you know, or maybe using breakpoints and debugging the code that way. And I thought that was really cool because, first of all, I think it kind of was trying to prove that, like, we don't actually know if one is better or not. But what is important and interesting to me is the idea that, like, you can choose the method that you like better or that works for you and the human side of it, right? The impact it has on our process. JOËL: That's really cool. I'll have to go and watch that talk. Building this kind of context and nuance around a heuristic, though, takes a lot of time, takes experience. And part of the value of a heuristic is that we're collapsing down maybe our own experience or somebody else's experience into something that doesn't require you to necessarily do all that work upfront. How do you feel about sharing and kind of targeting a lot of these heuristics to newer coders who are kind of trying to get better at their craft and looking for ways to improve without necessarily having to do, you know, five years of experience digging into a particular topic? Do you think heuristics are helpful, or do they maybe mislead? STEPHANIE: I really value when they're presented as an opinion, as opposed to a true fact about code. [laughs] Because I really appreciate when someone is able to explain to me why they chose readability in this particular scenario or why they chose speed and performance. Or maybe they were making a trade-off between accessibility and, you know, something else. To just, like, tell someone, "Oh yeah, like, DRY code is better code," or to just tell someone that without the explanation with, like, offering them the opportunity to reflect themselves on, like, oh, like, where have I seen DRY code that was easier for me to read? That seems a little less helpful in terms of investing in their growth. JOËL: Yeah. Definitely, I think sharing some of the purpose behind it can often be really useful because most of these heuristics are never an end unto themselves. They're a means to some other end. So, you're not writing code that's DRY just because you want to be cool. You're writing code to be DRY because you're trying to improve readability, make it easier to change so you don't have to change it in multiple places. You want to maybe reduce the chance of certain types of bugs. These are all actual purposes of what you want to do in your code. DRY is just one way of getting there. But oftentimes, we might skip that part and just be like, hey, you should make your code DRY because DRY is the best. And it can be, but it's in service to these other goals. STEPHANIE: I think when I am sharing those types of heuristics that are more commonly held, I also do like to preface, like, some people think this, or some people like to do things this way, just to be clear that they don't have to like it or do it. In general, I always prefer injecting more nuance [laughs] into the conversation. But yeah, like, it is a really personal process, I think, and figuring out, like, how any individual makes decisions about, like, all the code they're writing. You have to make a million [laughs] decisions every time you do it. So, yes, like, those heuristics do provide a shortcut. And also, I think it's worth taking the time to think about if it's working, especially for the specific context that you're applying it, right? Because that also can change. And, I don't know, maybe I'm just skeptical of any one size fits all solution. JOËL: I think for myself, with many heuristics, as a beginner coder, I had a bit of, like, a spiral journey, or maybe kind of going up a set of stairs. So, as a brand-new developer, I would make a lot of duplication bugs in my code, where, you know, I would have the same value in multiple places, and then I'd change it in one place, and I don't remember to change it in other places, and the code breaks. And so, being introduced to the idea of DRY actually helped my code get quite a bit better. It was, like, a net positive on my experience because I was not getting burned by all these bugs quite so frequently. And so, for a while, just throwing more DRY into my code just made my life better. And then, eventually, you kind of hit that plateau where I don't run into the pain of these bugs anymore. But now I keep doing more DRY somewhat mindlessly. And I end up with this pile of abstractions that are actually really brittle or frustrating to work with. And now, I have to rethink some of the assumptions behind the heuristic. And then, at that point, yep, maybe recontextualize a little bit, learn about when it's good, when are the trade-offs not worth it. Now I have a better understanding, and I kind of go on another growth bit where it makes a lot of my code better until maybe I hit another plateau. I've kind of maxed out the benefits. I start seeing some of the pain, and then, again, I have to go through this cycle again. And maybe the approach you were talking about earlier, where you do a side project and kind of push a heuristic to its breaking point, is a way to kind of speed run that process. STEPHANIE: Yeah, that's really interesting because you're just committing to it and trying to learn everything you can from it in a very concentrated setting. I also wonder, and it's totally fine if you don't know, but if someone had told you kind of all of those reasons you listed about why DRY code, like, what that achieves, if that may have reframed how you were thinking about applying it. Or was that also something that had to come from doing it enough? JOËL: I think as a brand-new developer, a lot of that would have gone over my head. I was still really shaky on the concept of abstraction. When is it useful? When is it not? So, a lot of those more subtle pitfalls, I think, would not have been relevant to me at that point in my career, even the concept of readability, right? When I'm a brand-new programmer, I'm still getting used to reading a lot of code. And so, the idea that code might be written in a way that's unreadable or more challenging to read, it might just feel like, oh, I just need to get better, improve myself. It's not that the code is written in a hard-to-read way. It's just I don't have enough experience at reading code. And I think that's a common thing that we do as beginners at everything, right? We start by blaming ourselves when things get hard. STEPHANIE: Yeah. I was just thinking that, you know, if you are sharing heuristics with a newer developer or an early-career developer, at the end of the day, like, really, I'm not sure about the value of just dropping it on them and letting them run [laughs] with it. But I think what could be really, really effective is just having a sustained relationship with them and, like, continuing that conversation. It's, like, maybe in a code review or in a pairing session being like, "Oh yeah, like, I see you're practicing DRY. Like, what do you think about how this made this piece of code different?" And kind of baking in that process of self-discovery along the way and speeding it up in that way as well. JOËL: So, what you're really saying is the one heuristic to rule them all is code in community. STEPHANIE: I love that. I'm totally with you. JOËL: On that note, shall we wrap up? STEPHANIE: Let's wrap up. Show notes for this episode can be found at bikeshed.fm. JOËL: This show has been produced and edited by Mandy Moore. STEPHANIE: If you enjoyed listening, one really easy way to support the show is to leave us a quick rating or even a review in iTunes. It really helps other folks find the show. JOËL: If you have any feedback for this or any of our other episodes, you can reach us @_bikeshed, or you can reach me @joelquen on Twitter. STEPHANIE: Or reach both of us at hosts@bikeshed.fm via email. JOËL: Thanks so much for listening to The Bike Shed, and we'll see you next week. ALL: Byeeeeeee!!!!!! ANNOUNCER: This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot, your expert strategy, design, development, and product management partner. We bring digital products from idea to success and teach you how because we care. Learn more at thoughtbot.com.

We are excited to be joined again by Evgeny Morozov, host of The Santiago Boys, a new narrative podcast series about the history of Cybersyn, the geopolitics of its creation in Cold War Latin America, and the legacy of Salvador Allende, Fernando Flores, and the man who looms largest of all: Stafford Beer. This podcast series is not like any story of Cybersyn you might have read before. Morozov has take a mountain of research — over 200 hundred original interviews, deep archival investigations, all compiled into an online resource accessible via the link below — and turned it into a thrilling narrative about a radical system that almost was, a world that could have been, and the people who fought to the end for those dreams. ••• The Santiago Boys: https://the-santiago-boys.com ••• Outro song: Fela Kuti - International Thief Thief (I.T.T.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jptR_YwCs3o Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

With wealthy tycoons and far-right militants lurking in the shadows, poised to strike, Allende charges at a towering tech giant. The Santiago Boys welcome Stafford Beer to Chile, inaugurating a daring cybernetic revolution. Could their audacious plan toss Allende a lifeline? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stafford Beer suddenly faces stinging accusations from radical British leftists. Is he engineering a cybernetic Big Brother? Meanwhile, Allende battles a political whirlwind, abandoned by the Kremlin and unable to fully overcome Washington's invisible blockade. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The day of reckoning arrives with a rain of missiles on La Moneda, spelling a tragic end for Allende's revolution. With Fernando arrested and others in exile, Cybersyn's future hangs in balance. A world away, a distraught Stafford Beer races against time to aid his imperiled Chilean comrades. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. For our eighth and final episode (for now) in our series on the basics of Cybernetics and how it relates to the labor movement, we finally explore the details of Stafford Beer's Viable Systems Model (VSM). John walks us through the various subsystems of Beer's model for analyzing organizations, and we discuss examples of how the model would apply to an individual human being, a labor union, and even an entire nation. We discuss the various key features of organization this form of analysis reveals, like the importance of devolving at least some management functions to the lowest level parts of the system, or in the case of a union, democratically empowering each and every member.  Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX  Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. We're back in the world of Cybernetics for this week's Patron episode. On Part 7 of our series, John explains the admittedly very complex concepts of Autopoiesis and Eudemony, key ideas for understanding Stafford Beer's "Viable Systems Model" which stands are the core of his thought. Breaking down these concepts of how systems like machines and biological organisms reproduce themselves and how structures organize themselves towards a maximal goal also help show the parallels between Cybernetics and the study of human societies, history, and more broadly how human beings organize themselves. On our next episode, we will go into the VSM in detail and explain how Beer used it as the foundation for setting up Project Cybersyn and embarking on an attempt to radically democratize the Chilean economy. Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX  Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

In this episode, the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973 is discussed, along with the consequential destruction of Stafford Beer's Project Cybersyn. Other issues examined are the nature of scarcity, poverty, empire and social neuroses. Transcript: https://www.revolutionnow.live Support Peter's efforts through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/peterjoseph Join his mailing list: https://www.peterjoseph.info/ Get Peter's book, The New Human Rights Movement: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/691520/the-new-human-rights-movement-by-peter-joseph/   This podcast is also available on Apple, Spotify, Podbean, Google Podcasts. Website & Free Archive https://www.revolutionnow.live/ Substack:  https://substack.com/@peterjoseph Join Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/RevolutionNowPodcast/   About Peter: https://www.peterjoseph.info/biography   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peterjosephofficial   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peterjosephofficial/

Often, risk and reward collide. Corporate giants and high-stakes gamblers unknowingly walk parallel paths. Their worlds may seem separate to outsiders, although fate has a way of intertwining their destinies. Both are driven by ambition, chasing triumph. But as their desires for success grow, a hidden truth begins to reveal itself. LLMs, like the roll of Snake Eyes in a dice game, hold the power to shape kismet and shatter dreams. The line between success and ruin is as fragile as the edge of a dice. As corporate entities collide with the ultimate risktakers, a new game emerges.Allen Woods served as a soldier in the British Army, primarily with Infantry battalions. Afterwards, he made a pivotal decision to enter into the world of computing. He devoted himself to studies, and eventually reached the esteemed level of a degree . He is a Charter member of the British Computer Society, and has extensive experience in building information management frameworks. He stops by BarCode to share his incredible journey of transformation, risk, and lifelong pursuit of knowledge. We focus on software development, Cybernetics, LLMs and fragility within data relationships.TIMESTAMPS:0:06:12 - Military IT Career and Knowledge Sharing0:12:43 - The Value of Connecting Databases0:17:45 - Incorporating Cybernetics in Software Development0:21:02 - Technological Economy's Low Equilibrium State0:27:01 - Importance of Due Diligence0:32:03 - Exploiting Relationships in Network Science0:38:59 - The UK Post Office's Horizon System0:42:47 - Limits of Probability Testing in AI0:48:28 - LLMs in Small BusinessesSYMLINKSLinkedInBritish Computer SocietyLudwig von Bertalanffy's “General Systemology”"Autopoiesis and Congition: The Realization of the Living"  by Humberto Maturana"Brain of the Firm" by Stafford Beer "The Heart of Enterprise" by Stafford Beer"Living Systems" by James Greer Miller Stephen Wolfram WritingsCommon Crawl DatasetProject GutenbergNetwork Science by BarabásiUK Post Office Horizon Case"The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" by Shoshana ZuboffDRINK INSTRUCTIONTHE LAST MECHANICAL ART3/4 Oz Mezcal3/4 Oz Cynar3/4 Oz Sweet Vermouth3/4 Oz CampariStir all ingredients in an ice-filled mixing glass and strain into a chilled coupe.  Optionally garnish with an Orange twist.INTERVIEWERSChris GlandenRohan LightMike ElkinsEPISODE SPONSORTUXCARECONNECT WITH USBecome a SponsorSupport us on PatreonFollow us on LinkedInTweet us at @BarCodeSecurityEmail us at info@barcodesecurity.com

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. Our series on Cybernetics and Labor continues this week as we dive into the beginning of Project Cybersyn and Stafford Beer's arrival in Chile. We discuss Beer's invitation from the government of Salvador Allende, his work with prominent government officials, and the incredible speed with which his project was assembled. We also begin breaking down Beer's concept of the Viable Systems Model as applied to a socialist government. In our next episode, we will discuss the planned deployment and testing of the project in the final months of Allende's time in power before the CIA-backed coup brought everything crashing to a halt. Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX  Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. We're back from our week off for Lina's wedding and in the latest episode of our series on the history of Cybernetics and its relationship to labor, we've finally arrived at the work of Stafford Beer. Beer's work on complex systems revolutionized the way management operations are thought of in both the business world and in all systems of planning. His book Brain of the Firm on how to better manage complex systems like factories or even networks of them was so influential, he was invited to assist the government of Chile under the leadership of recently elected socialist Salvador Allende. Beer's work on the project of creating an automated command center for monitoring and adjusting the economy of Chile, known as Cybersyn, has become legendary for its futuristic approach to running a planned society. In this episode we discuss an overview of Beer's life and works, and in the next few episodes we will dive into the details of his thought, how Cybersyn was meant to work, and how Beer's body of work can be used by the labor movement and socialists around the world today. Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX  Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

This week was a exciting but busy one with all of us getting together to celebrate Lina's wedding, which unfortunately made it impossible to put together the regular episode. So we've decided to unlock the first episode in our new series on the history of the field of cybernetics and how the labor movement has interacted with it. It's been a super fascinating topic learning about figures like Norbert Wiener, Ross Ashby, and Stafford Beer, so we hope you like this unlocked episode as just the first portion of what we've been covering. Our Cybernetics series will continue for patrons later this week and our weekly labor news rundown will be back at our regularly scheduled time next Tuesday! Thank you so much for listening, we couldn't do the show without you! Original Description: We're very excited this week to be starting our long awaited series discussing the history of the field of cybernetics and how it intersects with the labor movement. In this first part, John explains the life and work of polymath and founder of the study of cybernetics, Norbert Wiener. We discuss the parallels between Wiener's thinking and Marxism, the ways that his conception of cybernetics requires a dialectical outlook at the world, and how the systems theory approach of cybernetics can help us understand complex events, including in the realm of politics and organizing. Next week, we will continue with the second half of our discussions on Norbert Wiener, including his relationship with the UAW.   Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX   Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

Adam is joined by Dr James Fox to discuss the legacy of cybernetics and organizational theory, its Leftist critics, and the potential for a cybernetics of the commune, one which politicizes the dynamic systems of democracy at play in worker organizing. We discussed public attitudes to cyber-theory, the history of the field from Wiener to Bogdanov and Stafford Beer, and the use of machinic language from Deleuze to the CCRU.You can read all of the pieces from James we discussed today over at https://tektology.substack.com/Also: Catch James' talk on his work for the COVER centre at the University of Essex https://youtu.be/BO2LszSj9o8 Support the podcast:Linktree: https://linktr.ee/acidhorizonAcid Horizon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcastZer0 Books and Repeater Media Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/zer0repeaterMerch: http://www.crit-drip.comOrder 'The Philosopher's Tarot': https://repeaterbooks.com/product/the-philosophers-tarot/Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/169wvvhiHappy Hour at Hippel's (Adam's blog): https://happyhourathippels.wordpress.com​Revolting Bodies (Will's Blog): https://revoltingbodies.com​Split Infinities (Craig's Substack): https://splitinfinities.substack.com/​Music: https://sereptie.bandcamp.com/ and https://thecominginsurrection.bandcamp.com/Support the show

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. On the fourth episode of our series on the history of the discipline of Cybernetics and its relationship to the labor movement, we continue our discussions on the work of W Ross Ashby with his creation of the first fully self regulating machine, the Homeostat. This machine and its systems for returning itself to equilibrium provide a theoretical analogy for looking at how organizations like a labor union respond to changes to their environment. Ashby's development of the concept of variety and the regulation of systems provides a different way of examining the problems of bureaucracy, ossification, and the incredible potential in realizing true democracy.  In our next episodes, we will be moving to the work of Stafford Beer and the development of Management Cybernetics and the direct relationship between Cybernetics and Socialism. Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX  Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. On the third part of our deep dive into the history of the discipline of Cybernetics and its relations to the labor movement, we discuss the life and theories of W. Ross Ashby. His work on measurement of the complexity of a system with the concept of "Variety", helps us understand the ways complex structures, like a labor union, can be set up in ways that either give it the ability to adapt to changing inputs and become a stable, successful system, or can restrict its possible responses to a given situation and leave it unable to respond. We also discuss Stafford Beer's interpretation of Ashby's work, how it applies to economics, and the ways that thinking of complex systems like an economy in terms of variety helps us point out the differences between a capitalist and socialist economic system. On the next episode of our series, we will discuss Ashby's pioneering work on his self-regulating machine, the homeostat. Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

There are many alternative discovery procedures that are superior to market competition. Let's nurture and scale them, says Evgeny Morozov. Future Histories International Find all English episodes of Future Histories here: https://futurehistories-international.com/ and subscribe to the Future Histories International RSS-Feed (English episodes only)   Collaborative Podcast Transcription If you would like to support Future Histories by contributing to the collaborative transcription of episodes, please contact us at: transkription@futurehistories.today (German) Kollaborative Podcast-Transkription FAQ: shorturl.at/eL578 Shownotes Evgeny's Website: https://evgenymorozov.com/ Evgeny on Twitter: https://twitter.com/evgenymorozov Evgeny's upcoming Podcast – The Santiago Boys: https://the-santiago-boys.com/ Morozov, Evgeny. 2019. Digital Socialism?. New Left Review vol. 116/117: https://newleftreview.org/issues/II116/articles/evgeny-morozov-digital-socialism Morozov, Evgeny. 2022. Critique of Techno-Feudal Reason. New Left Review vol. 133/134: https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii133/articles/evgeny-morozov-critique-of-techno-feudal-reason Durand, Cédric. 2022. Scouting Capital's Frontiers. New Left Review vol. 136: https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii136/articles/cedric-durand-scouting-capital-s-frontiers Morozov, Evgeny. 2021. Beyond Competition: Alternative Discovery Procedures & The Postcapitalist Public Sphere. Lecture at University of California, Berkeley: https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/evgeny-morozov-beyond-competition-alternative-discovery-procedures-the-postcapitalist-public-sphere/ Morozov, Evgeny. 2014. The Planning Machine: Project Cybersyn and the origins of the Big Data nation. The New Yorker. October 13, 2014 Issue: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/13/planning-machine Morozov, Evgeny. 2013. To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism. Public Affairs.: https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/evgeny-morozov/to-save-everything-click-here/9781610393706/ Selected Writings (2006-2013): https://web.archive.org/web/20210202002521/http://www.evgenymorozov.com/writings.html The Syllabus: https://www.the-syllabus.com/    Further Shownotes James M. Buchanan (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_M._Buchanan Stafford Beer (Monoskop): https://monoskop.org/Stafford_Beer Viable System Model (VSM): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model "Designing Freedom" - The 1973 CBC Massey Lectures by Stafford Beer [audio]: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-1973-cbc-massey-lectures-designing-freedom-1.2946819 "Designing Freedom" - The 1973 CBC Massey Lectures by Stafford Beer [pdf via Internet Archive]: https://archive.org/details/designingfreedom00beer/mode/2up Medina, Eden. 2011. Cybernetic Revolutionaries. Cambridge: MIT Press: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/cybernetic-revolutionaries Raymond Williams: https://raymondwilliams.co.uk/about-raymond-williams/ Stefano Harney: https://egs.edu/biography/stefano-harney/ Max Weber (Monoskop): https://monoskop.org/Max_Weber Carl Menger (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Menger Jürgen Habermas (Monoskop): https://monoskop.org/J%C3%BCrgen_Habermas Santa Fe Institute: https://www.santafe.edu/ Herbert Marcuse (Monoskop): https://monoskop.org/Herbert_Marcuse Anwar Shaikh: https://www.anwarshaikhecon.org/ Cybersyn Project Chile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn Maslow's hierarchy of needs (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs Posner, Eric A., and E. Glen Weyl. 2018. Radical Markets - Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society. Princeton University Press.: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691177502/radical-markets   Further Future Histories Episodes on related topics S02E31 | Thomas Swann on Anarchist Cybernetics: https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s02/e31-thomas-swann-on-anarchist-cybernetics/  S02E27 | Nick Dyer-Witheford on Biocommunism: https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s02/e27-nick-dyer-witheford-on-biocommunism/ S02E11 | James Muldoon on Platform Socialism: https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s02/e11-james-muldoon-on-platform-socialism/ S02E10 | Aaron Benanav on Associational Socialism and Democratic Planning: https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s02/e10-aaron-benanav-on-associational-socialism-and-democratic-planning/ [German] S02E07 | Simon Schaupp zu Technopolitik von unten: https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s02/e07-simon-schaupp-zu-technopolitik-von-unten/ S01E58 | Jasper Bernes on Planning and Anarchy: https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s01/e58-jasper-bernes-on-planning-and-anarchy/ [German] S01E51 | Timo Daum zur unsichtbaren Hand des Plans: https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s01/e51-timo-daum-zur-unsichtbaren-hand-des-plans/ S01E44 | Benjamin Bratton on Synthetic Catallaxies, Platforms of Platforms & Red Futurism: https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s01/e44-benjamin-bratton-on-synthetic-catallaxies-platforms-of-platforms-red-futurism-part-1-2/ [German] S01E18 | Simon Schaupp zu Kybernetik und radikaler Demokratie: https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s01/e18-simon-schaupp-zu-kybernetik-und-radikaler-demokratie/ S01E16 | Richard Barbrook on Imaginary Futures: https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s01/e16-richard-barbrook-on-imaginary-futures/ [German] S01E01 | Benjamin Seibel zu Kybernetik: https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s01/e01-benjamin-seibel-zu-kybernetik/   If you like Future Histories, you can help with your support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/FutureHistories? Write me at office@futurehistories.today and join the discussion on Twitter (#FutureHistories): https://twitter.com/FutureHpodcast or on Mastodon: @FutureHistories@mstdn.social or on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/FutureHistories/ or on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfRFz38oh9RH73-pWcME6yw www.futurehistories.today   Episode Keywords: #EvgenyMorozov, #Interview, #JanGroos, #FutureHistories, #FutureHistoriesInternational, #Cybernetics,  #CyberCommunism, #Communism, #Technopolitics, #Cybersyn, #TheSantiagoBoys, #Chile, #SalvadorAllende, #StaffordBeer, #DigitalSocialism, #ImaginaryFutures, #Self-Organization, #Cybernetics, #Autonomy, #CentralControlStructure, #Decentralisation, #OrganizationalCybernetics, #CyberneticPlannedEconomy, #DigitalSocialism, #Socialism, #Anarchism, #Capitalism, #Competition, 

Please support our patreon.  For early and ad-free episodes, members-only content, and more.Jeremy Gross is a cybernetic tikkun olamunist living north of Boston, Massachusetts. He is interested in collaborative workspaces that incorporate peer-to-peer and empathetic practices to subsume alienated labor. We chat about his paper on Stafford Beer.   But we also talk about bad incentive structures in tech, misunderstanding machine learning, and limits of AI.  We go into Jewish and Yiddish culture as well as communists of that ilk. Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here.   Crew:Host: C. Derick VarnAudio Producer: Paul Channel Strip  ( @aufhebenkultur )Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.Intro Video Design: Jason MylesLinks and Social Media:twitter: @skepoetFacebookYou can find the additional streams on Youtube Support the show

Dimitri, Khalid, and Neuroscientist Jay (@The_Hague_ICC) continue exploring the complex history of cybernetics, including: “from electroshock to the psychedelic sixties”, Grey Walter's EEG research, the discovery of alpha/beta/delta brainwaves, the expectancy wave and readiness potential, Walter's robotic tortoises, the popularity of biofeedback today, the sus “world brain”, computer-brain interfaces for video gaming, SRI's “Changing Images of Man”, Ross Ashby, “forcing an environment to reveal itself” and the mass shooter phenomenon, feedback flicker and the Stroboscope, silk topper sicko William Seward Burroughs, Jr. and Allen Ginsberg's MK-Ultra LSD flicker experiments in Palo Alto, the California Ideology, the Dream Machine, the embrace of stroboscopic lights by Ken Kesey, Del Close, and The Grateful Dead, Stafford Beer and Chile's Project CYBERSYN, Beer's 2002 lecture about cybernetically understanding 9/11, the Satanic Panic artificial dialectic, cybernetics-as-dialectics, and counter-erming Western leftists who reject the synthesis of “parapolitical” and Historical Materialist analyses. For access to full-length premium episodes and the SJ Grotto of Truth Discord, subscribe to the Al-Wara' Frequency at patreon.com/subliminaljihad.

In which the GIU community comes together to finish "Prospectus", the 20th and final chapter of Stafford Beer's "Brain of the Firm". If you like the show, consider supporting us on Patreon. Links: General Intellect Unit on iTunes http://generalintellectunit.net Support the show on Patreon https://twitter.com/giunitpod General Intellect Unit on Facebook General Intellect Unit on archive.org Emancipation Network

In which the GIU community comes together to wrap up our discussion of Stafford Beer's "Brain of the Firm". If you like the show, consider supporting us on Patreon. Links: General Intellect Unit on iTunes http://generalintellectunit.net Support the show on Patreon https://twitter.com/giunitpod General Intellect Unit on Facebook General Intellect Unit on archive.org Emancipation Network

In which the GIU community comes together to discuss "Prospectus", the 20th and final chapter of Stafford Beer's "Brain of the Firm". If you like the show, consider supporting us on Patreon. Links: General Intellect Unit on iTunes http://generalintellectunit.net Support the show on Patreon https://twitter.com/giunitpod General Intellect Unit on Facebook General Intellect Unit on archive.org Emancipation Network

In which the GIU community comes together to discuss "Prospectus", the 20th and final chapter of Stafford Beer's "Brain of the Firm". If you like the show, consider supporting us on Patreon. Links: General Intellect Unit on iTunes http://generalintellectunit.net Support the show on Patreon https://twitter.com/giunitpod General Intellect Unit on Facebook General Intellect Unit on archive.org Emancipation Network

In which the GIU community comes together to discuss "Prospectus", the 20th and final chapter of Stafford Beer's "Brain of the Firm". If you like the show, consider supporting us on Patreon. Links: General Intellect Unit on iTunes http://generalintellectunit.net Support the show on Patreon https://twitter.com/giunitpod General Intellect Unit on Facebook General Intellect Unit on archive.org Emancipation Network

In which the GIU community comes together to discuss "Prospectus", the 20th and final chapter of Stafford Beer's "Brain of the Firm". If you like the show, consider supporting us on Patreon. Links: General Intellect Unit on iTunes http://generalintellectunit.net Support the show on Patreon https://twitter.com/giunitpod General Intellect Unit on Facebook General Intellect Unit on archive.org Emancipation Network